European Central Bank
The European Central Bank is the central bank of the EU and the primary institution of the ESCB.
Contents
Composition
The ECB is led by an executive board composed of a president, vice-president and four expert members.
The Governing Council includes the executive board and the governors of each national bank that implements the Euro currency.
The General Council includes the president, vice-president, and the governors of each EU member's national bank. If all EU members implement the Euro currency, this institution becomes defunct. The additional banks represented here include:
History
The bank is the successor of the European Monetary Cooperation Fund (EMCF) and the European Monetary Institute (EMI). These earlier bodies were established under the authority of the European Economic Community (EEC).
EMCF was established in 1973 and was led by a board of governors composed of the national banks' governors. Their purview was simply coordination and all EEC members participated; at the time these were:
The European Monetary System (EMS) launched in 1979 with the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) tied to the European Currency Unit (ECU). Of the EEC members, only the UK did not participate. Around this time, the independence and consistency of the Bundesbank allowed it to emerge as the dominant institution within the EMS. Greece, Spain, and Portugal joined in the 1980s; Germany also reunified, with the new state inheriting West Germany's place.
The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 called for a European Monetary Union (EMU). EMI was established as a transitional body to encourage currency convergence. The UK and Denmark were granted an opt-out of the union, and Greece ultimately was not able to achieve convergence in time for the 1999 launch of the Eurosystem.
The Treaty of Amsterdam later that year established the ECB to oversee the ESCB