Editing European Monetary System (section)

===Creation of the European Currency Unit===
{{Main|European Currency Unit}}
European currency exchange rate stability has been one of the most important objectives of European policymakers since the [[World War II|Second World War.]]{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}} Between 1982 and 1987, European currencies displayed a range of stable and unstable behavior. For example, the [[Dutch guilder]] remained quite stable with respect to the Mark, the [[Italian lira]] exhibited a sharp downward trend throughout the life of the EMS, and the [[French franc]], the [[Belgian franc]], the [[Danish krone]] and the [[Irish pound]] all escaped trends of successive devaluations to emerge more stable.<ref name="Weber-1991" /> At the same time that the EMS was created, the [[Council of the European Union]] Ministers created a new monetary unit, the European Currency Unit (ECU).<ref name=":Alogoskoufis"/> The ECU was the official monetary unit of the EMS, but it was purely a composite accounting unit, not a real currency. The ECU's value was based on the weighted average of a basket of 12 European currencies; the Austrian schilling, Belgian franc, German mark, Spanish peseta, French franc, Finnish markka, Greek drachma, Irish pound, Italian lira, Luxembourgish franc, Dutch guilder, and Portuguese escudo. The exchange rates for member nations' currencies were based on their value relative to the ECU.<ref name=":Alogoskoufis"/><ref name="Investopedia: The European Currency Unit" /><ref name="Was the ERM Crisis Inevitable? Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Review">{{cite journal|last=Higgins|first=Bryon|title=Was the ERM Crisis Inevitable?|journal=Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Review, Fourth Quarter, 1993|pages=27–40|url=https://www.kansascityfed.org/Publicat/Econrev/EconRevArchive/1993/4q93HIGG.pdf|access-date=25 October 2011}}</ref>