In Africa, however, with the CFA Franc zone and the South African Rand zone, two currency unions already exist. III st  European Monetary Union (EMU), which started on January 1 , 1999, has its origins in the 1970s, when the first plan of a single European currency was drafted.
Not until the Treaty of Maastricht — signed in 1992 — was the notion of a European currency put into concrete form. EMU is to be completed six weeks from now, when euro notes and coins are circulated. Monetary unions in Europe, however, are not unprecedented. Three of them were set up during the th th second half of the 19 century.