Monetary union and the law: some comments

Abstract

This chapter addresses two aspects of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) which have great relevance as they reflect some original perspectives and could be useful for the sake of comparison with other monetary experiments around the world. They concern the transformation and the evolution, in times of crisis, of the role of national central banks (NCBs) within the Eurosystem and the difficulty of insertion of the euro area into the global system. The concept of the ‘Eurosystem’ was introduced by Article 282, paragraph 1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), formerly the Treaty on the European Community, as modified by the so-called Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009. From the start of the final stage of the EMU, on 1 January 1999, this denomination of Eurosystem has identified, within the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), the group formed by the NCBs that have adopted the euro as a single currency and the European Central Bank (ECB). Only these NCBs of Member States are ‘integral parts’ of the ESCB, which includes all the NCBs of the European Union (EU), whether or not they have adopted the single currency. We will analyse this situation in the first section and try to focus on the evolution and possible changes in relation to the original conception of the Treaty.