Economics bank

Monetary policy

Markets

Money

Europe

Europe - The euro

Theories

An essential part of creating a single currency was to start to bring exchange rates closer together. This was the purpose of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The UK joined the ERM in 1990, but following 'Black Wednesday' (16th September 1992) we left again! In this section we look at how the ERM worked and also at some of the arguments for and against the UK joining the single currency.

• Should the UK join the single currency?
• The ERM - the ERM was a sort of halfway house between fixed and floating exchange rates, so how did it work?