Recently, the debate over the political and economic consequences of a single European currency has intensified. How will relations develop between countries included and those excluded from monetary union? How will monetary union affect the ambitions of central European countries to join the EU? What effect is a single European currency likely to have on interest rates, unemployment, and the international trading order?

In September 1996, the New Atlantic Initiative convened a panel of three leading economic observers at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss the efficacy and outcome of the EU's efforts to adopt a single currency. Allan Meltzer is a resident scholar at AEI and professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Paul Mentré is executive secretary of the Committee for the Monetary Union of Europe. Otmar Issing is a member of the Directorate of the German Bundesbank. Their presentations are published here along with an incisive and compelling commentary by Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, who delivered the session's luncheon address.

Jeffrey Gedmin is executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative and a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.