IS THE EUROPEAN UNION AN OPTIMUM CURRENCY AREA?

The criteria to determine the optimum currency areas established by Robert Mundell have dominated the majority of the UME debates and the conclusions showed that Europe, made either of 6, 15 or more countries doesn ʹt represent an optimum currency area, because it doesnʹt meet but only partially these criteria. Though, the adoption of the single currency can contribute to the increasing of the monetary optimality degree because the monetary unification accelerates the economic integration and thus leads to a better synchronization of the business cycles and, implicitly to the possibility of utilizing only one monetary policy in the countries part of the currency area