Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union in the context of "Greek government debt crisis"

The European Union's (EU) Common Commercial Policy, or EU Trade Policy, is the policy whereby EU Member States delegate authority to the European Commission to negotiate their external trade relations, with the aim of increasing trade amongst themselves and their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The Common Commercial Policy is logically necessitated by the existence of the Customs Union, which in turn is also the foundation upon which the Single Market and Monetary Union were later established.

The Monetary Convention of 23 December 1865 was a unified system of coinage that provided a degree of monetary integration among several European countries, initially Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland, at a time when the circulation of banknotes in these countries remained relatively marginal. In early 1866, it started being referred to in the British press as the Latin Monetary Union, with intent to make clear that the United Kingdom would not join, and has been generally referred to under that name (French: union latine) and the acronym LMU since then. A number of countries minted coins according to the LMU standard even though they did not formally join the LMU.

The LMU has been viewed as a forerunner of late-20th-century European monetary union but cannot be directly compared with it, not least since the LMU did not rely on any common institutions. Unlike the Scandinavian Monetary Union established a few years later, the Latin Monetary Union remained limited to coinage and never extended to paper money. That made the LMU increasingly less relevant, and it was quietly disbanded in 1926.

The euro area, commonly called the eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 20 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (€) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented Economic and Monetary Union policies.

The 20 eurozone members are:Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

The euro convergence criteria (also known as the Maastricht criteria) are the criteria European Union member states are required to meet to enter the third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopt the euro as their currency. The four main criteria, which actually comprise five criteria as the "fiscal criterion" consists of both a "debt criterion" and a "deficit criterion", are based on Article 140 (ex article 121.1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Full EMU membership is only open to EU member states. However, the European microstates of Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican City, which are not members of the EU, have signed monetary agreements with the EU which allow them officially to adopt the euro and issue their own variant of euro coins. These states had all previously used one of the eurozone currencies replaced by the euro, or a currency pegged to one of them. These states are not members of the eurozone and do not get a seat in the European Central Bank (ECB) or the Eurogroup.

In the European Union (EU), enhanced cooperation (previously known as closer cooperation) is a procedure where a minimum of nine EU member states are allowed to establish advanced integration or cooperation in an area within EU structures but without the other member states being involved. As of October 2017, this procedure is being used in the fields of the Schengen acquis, divorce law, patents, property regimes of international couples, and European Public Prosecutor and is approved for the field of a financial transaction tax.

This is distinct from the EU opt-out, that is a form of cooperation between EU member states within EU structures, where it is allowed for a limited number of states to refrain from participation (e.g. EMU, Schengen Area). It is further distinct from Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification and permanent acquis suspensions, whose lifting is conditional on meeting certain benchmarks by the affected member states.

The Eurogroup is the recognised collective term for the informal meetings of the finance ministers of the eurozone—those member states of the European Union (EU) which have adopted the euro as their official currency. The group has 20 members. It exercises political control over the currency and related aspects of the EU's monetary union such as the Stability and Growth Pact. The outgoing president of the Eurogroup is Paschal Donohoe, the former Minister for Finance of Ireland.

The ministers meet in camera a day before a meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) of the Council of the European Union. They communicate their decisions via press and document releases. The group is related to the Council of the European Union (only Eurogroup member states vote on issues relating to the euro in the ECOFIN) and was formalised under the Treaty of Lisbon.

The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) is a committee of the European Parliament which is responsible for the regulation of financial services, the free movement of capital and payments, taxation and competition policies, oversight of the European Central Bank, and the international financial system.

Since the establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), one of the most important function of this committee has been the oversight of the European Central Bank (ECB) through the "monetary dialogue". Although guaranteed independence under the Treaty, the ECB is accountable for its actions towards the European Parliament, and more precisely the ECON Committee. Every three months, the President of the ECB, or occasionally another member of the ECB's executive board, appears before the Committee to report on monetary policy and answer question from MEPs. These proceedings, usually called the "monetary dialogue", are webstreamed and a transcript is made available on both the Parliament and ECB websites.