To What Extent has the Financial Crisis Challenged the Notion Economic and Monetary Union Has Been a Success in Economic and Political Terms?
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Introduction
Many countries and the world in general have been experiencing financial crisis in one time or another starting from the famous 1930s great depression in USA, 2008/2009 US economic crisis to the most recent one, European economic crisis. This is not the first time the European nations have been hit by a crisis; they have been hit many other times in the past, a factor that led to the formation of European Union. The main goals of forming this regional block were to try and regulate economic and political environment within that particular region using one of its policies covered under European Monetary Union (EMU) (Purnhagen, 2013, P.35). However, the effectiveness of EMU has been questionable when it comes to matters concerning controlling political and economic environments of their member states or the region.
Economic and Monetary Union(EMU) refers to a trade block which has a common market and uses a common currency. The union has a number of policies that have been set by members states of European Union primarily to converge the economies and the political environment of the member states. The policies are set in stages namely stage one, stage two and stage three with each stage stipulating the conditions that every country has to meet in order to be a member state. However, all the 17 Eurozone countries are members of EMU (Purnhagen, 2013, P.95). Only member states in the third stage are allowed use euro currency in doing financial transactions, a condition that most of the Europeans countries except Denmark and United Kingdom have already complied with.
EMU has numerous achievements since its realization. Some of the most notable ones include creation of friendly economic climate in the euro zone, introduction of a common currency, continuous...