Private Tools for Political Goals: The European Currency Unit Private Market and the Making of Economic and Monetary Union in the 1980s

By the early 1990s, the private European Currency Unit (ECU) became the third largest currency in the bond market, after the dollar and the yen. This article explores the rise of the ECU private market in the 1980s. It argues that the ECU’s political links with the European Economic Community (EEC) were central to its successful development, but also that business actors, by devising a marketable ECU, played a role in advancing the project of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), whether voluntarily or not. The article draws on archival evidence from the records of banks and companies, business associations, as well as European institutions, national governments, and central banks. It sheds new light on the role of business influence in public affairs in the late twentieth century, the history of monetary integration and the making of the EMU, and the history of money and private currencies. It thereby shows how the ECU served as a rehearsal for the EMU.