Hard écu in Europe
Description of Hard écu
The Concise Encyclopedia of the European Union describes hard écu in the following terms: [1] The idea that the EC should adopt a non-exclusive common currency, instead of a single currency, was floated by the British government in 1990, but rejected by the other member states as insufficiently communautaire (see more in this European encyclopedia). The proposal was to create a ‘hard écu’, that is, one that could not be devalued against any national European currency. The difference between the hard écuand the discredited ECU was that the latter, being a basket of currencies, had suffered from the extreme weakness throughout the 1980s of some of its components such as the drachma and the escudo.
Resources
Notas y References
- Based on the book “A Concise Encyclopedia of the European Union from Aachen to Zollverein”, by Rodney Leach (Profile Books; London)