The die is cast - following the European Council's resolutions on 2nd-3rd May, European Monetary Union (EMU) will get under way on 1st January 1999 with eleven participating countries. So there is little point now in musing on whether it might not have been better to start out with a smaller group of so-called core-currency countries that have already maintained a de facto monetary union for a decade, with stable exchange rates, low inflation and virtually harmonized interest rates.
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