Why monetary unification?

According to the EU, EMU is a single-currency area within the EU single market, now known informally as the euro zero, in which people, goods, services, and capital are supposed to move without restrictions.Beginning with the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and continuing with the Single European Act of 1987, the Maastricht Treaty of 1991-1992, and the Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997, a core set of European countries worked steadily toward integrating their individual countries into one larger, more efficient, domestic market.Even after the launch of the 1992 Single Europe program, however, a number of barriers to true openness remained.The use of different currencies required both consumers and companies to treat the individual markets separately.Currency risk of cross-border commerce still persisted.The creation of a single currency is designed to move beyond these vestiges of separated markets.

The official abbreviation of the euro, EUR, has been registered with the International Standards Organization (letter abbreviations are needed for computer-based worldwide trading).This is similar to the three-letter computer symbols used for the US dollar, USD, and the British pound sterling, GBP.The official symbol of the euro is €.According to the EU, the symbol was inspired by the Greek letter epsilon (ε), simultaneously referring to Greece’s ancient role as the source of European civilization and recalling the first letter of the word Europe.