And policy makers cannot subordinate it to other objectives -- subject to expedience, the political leaning of the government, or election dates. By choosing that structure, the signatories of the Treaty made a conscious decision to continue a tradition which, especially in the postwar era, has become established in a number of countries in Europe whose currencies have shown a particular degree of stability.
Even countries which, for a long time, had tied their currency regimes much more closely to everyday policy-making have evidently come to recognise the advantages of unpolitical monetary systems in the run-up to Maastricht. This does not, of course, rule out the possibility of the earlier tradition occasionally rearing its head in some isolated issues.