European Economic and Monetary Union was established as the final step in the process of creating a single economic market among member nations of the European Union (EU). A major task of Economic and Monetary Union, also called EMU, was replacing the many national currencies in the EU with one currency, called the euro. See Euro.
Eleven EU members began phasing in the euro in 1999 by fixing the values of their traditional currencies to the value of the euro. As of 2023, 20 member countries of the EU had converted their currency to the euro. These countries were Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Republic of Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. The EMU process is still used, however, to help other EU countries in their attempt to adopt the euro as their currency.
