The euro area at its formation and the origins of the crisis When deciding on what architecture to give to the monetary union, policymakers settled on a “bare-bones” approach. The approach rested on an independent, price-stability-oriented central bank – the ECB – and fiscal discipline by the individual countries, fostered by the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact and enforced by the markets.
The Maastricht Treaty called on countries to pursue sound economic policies that would support the ECB in maintaining its price-stability goal. The dominant view at the founding of the EMU was that current-account imbalances among countries in the monetary union would become as irrelevant as they are among regions of individual countries.