Abstract

ECUnomics – Perspectives of a European Monetary Order

The object of this paper is essentially an economic problem analysis of the European currency unit (“ECUnomics”); it is conceived as a survey-like stocktaking of the position at the beginning of a research project (on the perspectives of monetary integration and stability in Europe) and therefore aims more at stimulating critical reactions than at giving answers. An inquiry is made into the optimal pattern of a European monetary constitution, including a possible role of the Ecu in such a concept. Inter alia, an answer must give explicit consideration to the international phenomena of capital mobility and currency substitution. The necessity of further monetary integration in the European Community in the long run can be derived basically from the implications of these two economic facts; political goodwill then plays a role rather for the rapidity and institutional configuration of progress in integration policy. In an initial and undoubtedly incomplete approach to the problems, the concrete path to a European monetary order is divided into three stages. In the first stage the emphasis is on progress in monetary integration, in the second stage on progress in monetary stability (convergence to price stability). The third stage, with respect to which essentially only questions are raised, might be described as a sort of “institutional consolidation” of the previously achieved progress towards integration and stability. Here a distinction is drawn between mainly internal issues (e.g. introduction and inflation risks of a parallel Ecu currency) and the more external aspects (e.g. Ecu as an international reserve currency) – all problem areas for which precise and, in particular, empirically well-founded analyses are still lacking.