The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was set up with the goal of integrating EU economies. All 28 EU member states took part in the formation of EMU. Together, member states make up the Euro area.
Economic integration offers member states the advantage of opening up the region so that citizens and residents can access more opportunities for employment and for doing business. This boosts the individual and joint economies of member states.
Economic governance of member states
Under EMU, there is no one institution that comes up and implements the economic policy. Rather, all the responsibility is divided among member states and EU institutions. These institutions are:
- The Eurogroup which coordinates the policies of common interest for the Euro area
- The European Council that sets the major policy orientations
- The Member States who come up with their individual budgets which are kept to the agreed deficit and debt limits. Member states also decide on their own structural policies on matters to do with pensions, labour, and capital markets.
- The Council of the EU also known as the Council that coordinates EU economy policy-making and makes decisions on if a member state can take up the use of the common currency, the Euro.
- The European Parliament which works with the Council to formulate legislation and also is tasked with subjecting economic governance to scrutiny in a democratic manner through the new Economic Dialogue.
- The European Commission which is in charge of monitoring compliance and performance.
- The European Central Bank (ECB) that comes up with the monetary policy with the aim of achieving price stability in the region and acting as a central supervisor of financial institutions in the region.
Doing our part
As the EMU does their part to improve trade in the Euro area, B2B Pay is also hard at work. B2B is a Finnish fintech company that facilitates international B2B payments. We do this by offering importers and exporters a European virtual account. All transactions are done virtually which eliminates delays that would be caused by passing paperwork back and forth.
A virtual account also reduces the cost of international financial transactions significantly. In fact, there are savings of 50 % to 85% in transaction fees which brings the profit margin by 7 % to 20%. This is in comparison to doing a wire transfer from one of the banks in Europe which number over 100,000.
A B2B Pay virtual account gives you access to the 35 SEPA countries in Europe. If you are looking to start your expand your import/export in this region, contact us and let us facilitate simple, fast and low-cost international trade transactions for you.