AMUE was founded in 1987 as a business pressure group for the adoption of a single currency in Europe. Supported by several hundred leading European multinational companies – including Philips, BP, Volkswagen, Fiat, Alcatel and Solvay – as well as many major European banks, AMUE quickly emerged as an important force in the debate on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Organised through national chapters and coordinated by a small central secretariat in Paris, membership of AMUE was ‘open to any business, provided it shares the vision of Europe as a single-currency zone’. It held conferences, published research and undertook opinion surveys on issues of monetary integration and the transition to full EMU. Mirroring the role of the Kangaroo Group in promoting a barrier-free single market some years earlier, AMUE helped link pro-single currency politicians with sympathetic business representatives at a critical juncture. However, once stage three of EMU was achieved in 1999, the rationale for the organisation became less apparent and it wound up its operations soon thereafter.
September 2012
Copyright: Anthony Teasdale, 2012
Citation: The Penguin Companion to European Union (2012), additional website entry