20 years of European Monetary Union

marked the 20th anniversary of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).While the original idea of a monetary union in Europe goes back to a European Summit in The Hague in 1969, where the Heads of State and Government of the European Community called for a plan for economic and monetary union in Europe, it was not until nearly 30 years later that European monetary unification came about.Between the beginning of 1999, when the European Monetary Union was established, and the beginning of 2019, the group of member countries increased from initially 11 countries to 19 countries.During the same period, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/2009 as well as subsequent crises in some member countries severely challenged the monetary union several times.This special issue of the Journal of Economics and Statistics reviews some of the most important aspects of the experience of the monetary unification in Europe during the first two decades.The topics range from a historical perspective to monetary, fiscal and trade problems and also cover issues of policy uncertainty.The special issue deliberately comprises papers of different approaches.Some are more descriptive or policy-oriented and some are more theoretical or empirical.In the first paper, Fendel and Frenkel provide a comparative study of 20 years of EMU and the 20 years the preceding European Monetary System was in place.The same time length offers an interesting historical perspective at the monetary integration process.The authors look at the performance of different economic variables and show how the member countries performed relative to each other and vis-à-vis other countries.Their study suggests that in some areas (e. g. regarding public debt development), economic stability was lower during the EMU period and in other areas (e. g. the foreign exchange market), it was higher during the EMU phase.The paper of van Riet examines the monetary policy of the ECB during the first two decades from two perspectives.He shows that, from a Keynesian perspective, the ECB had to fight stagnation for more than half of the 20-year