For instance, five European countries joined ranks to set up the Latin monetary union between 1875 and 1927, three other countries formed the
Scandinavian monetary union (1873-1914).
We found that there was a key difference between the success rates of national monetary unions like the United States, Canada, Germany, and Italy compared with international monetary unions like the
Scandinavian Monetary Union and the Latin Monetary Union.
1873: Denmark adopts the krone in the
Scandinavian Monetary Union with Sweden, whose new currency is called the krona (Norway joins in 1875, with the krone).
German unification marked the culminating point of monetary simplification in Europe during the second millennium: only eighteen currencies were left in Europe in 1875 and eight of these were officially linked either by the Latin Monetary Union (LMU) or by the Scandinavian Monetary Union.
A fundamental distinction has to be made between supranational monetary unions agreed on by sovereign states (such as the German, Latin and Scandinavian monetary unions), and the national political unifications followed by the introduction of a single currency (the establishment of the Swiss franc, the Italian lira and the German mark).[1] The latter have been occasionally quoted as relevant precedents for the euro, but they are not, since they lack most of the difficulties of intergovernmental negotiations, particularly the matter of vetoes, and will be discussed only briefly.
It covers three surviving monetary unions (the Zollverein, the Swiss experience, and the Belgium-Luxembourg union) and two that failed (the Latin Monetary Union and the
Scandinavian Monetary Union).
In contrast, monetary integration without political integration - as in the Latin or
Scandinavian monetary unions - was ultimately doomed to fail.