The Proscpects for EMU by 1999 - and Reflections on Arrangements for the Outsiders

The Member States of the European Union will have to face, over the next couple of years, the difficult issue of how to handle the relationship between those countries that are both willing and able to join the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and those countries that will remain outside, for one reason or another, when the first group moves ahead to lock exchange rates permanently and subsequently to introduce the single currency. The issue is difficult because it raises several sensitive issues not dealt with in the Maastricht Treaty or in other official documents. This issue is - with a couple of exceptions - only implicitly addressed in the academic literature. In consequence, the topic remians open for wide-ranging reflection, in part because the nature of the proposed solutions depends on the number and size of the countries which move ahead to EMU relative to those remaining initially outside.