Challenges of the Knowledge Society (May 2021)
EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION OF THE ECONOMIC AND MONETARY UNION: OVERLOOK AT THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS AND THE LEGAL INSTRUMENTS USED (FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE MAASTRICHT TREATY)
Abstract
As we write this, the Economic and Monetary Union seems to have overcome the crisis that has affected its credibility since 2009, continuing to present itself as the most successful monetary integration initiative in the world. This impression cannot be considered unfounded, as although economic and monetary unions existed before (such as those between England and Scotland in the 18th century, Belgium and Luxembourg or, ultimately, between the former British colonies that made up the United States of America), the Economic and Monetary Union to which we refer is the only such construction that brings together a number of 27 states, of which 19 have adopted a single currency (Euro), 27 states between which there have been and can still be found numerous differences in language, culture, level of development and values of the main economic indicators. Like any legal construction of this magnitude, Economic and Monetary Union did not emerge suddenly, but is the result of several decades of efforts, creative interpretations of the Community / Union and public international law, including an original but no less efficient use of mixed legal instruments. To these aspects we will refer in the approach we submit to your attention, consisting of two researches that address the evolution of Economic and Monetary Union from its premises to the present. Thus, in the first of these, which is the subject of this study, we will refer to the main moments that defined the development of the future Economic and Monetary Union even before its consecration at the level of European Union primary law, using, in the absence of other legal grounds, both a set of provisions of primary law which led, by way of interpretation, to the possibility of establishing a monetary cooperation between Member States, and a number of instruments specific to public international law rather than Community law but which, nevertheless, by way of the member states voluntarily assuming the application of their provisions, have produced the desired effects in the legal order of the Communities, notwithstanding the absence of an obligation to that effect.
