The best way to fit it together

ALMOST daily, the European Union's politicians insist that their planned economic and monetary union (EMU) is on course, and that a still-to-be-decided number of EU countries will adopt a single currency, the euro, on January 1st 1999. Yet a vital element of this historic undertaking is missing. Finance ministers have yet to decide how to set the exchange rates at which, come the great day, D-marks, francs and so forth should be forever fixed. If they do not make up their minds, an IMF official has said, they risk “chaos” in financial markets.