In October 1962, the European Commission publishes a memorandum on the Community’s action plan for the second stage of the Customs Union, relating, in particular, to the rules on competition, the common agricultural policy and social policy.

On 8 October 1970, Pierre Werner, Luxembourg Minister of State, President of the Government and Finance Minister, submits to the Council of Ministers and the European Commission his final report on the conditions for the feasibility of an economic and monetary union.

In June 1988, the Hanover European Council entrusts to a Committee chaired by Jacques Delors, President of the Commission of the European Communities, ‘the task of studying and proposing concrete stages leading towards the progressive realisation of economic and monetary union (EMU).' The ‘Delors Report', published in April 1989, proposes that EMU be achieved in three stages. During stage two, a European System of Central Banks (ESCB) will be set up in order to make preparations for the transition to the single Community currency during the third stage.

The Treaty on European Union is signed in Maastricht on 7 February 1992 and enters into force on 1 November 1993.

Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, as amended and renamed by the Treaty signed on 13 December 2007 in Lisbon which entered into force on 1 December 2009. This is the consolidated version from 2012.

In November 2011, in reaction to the crisis and the weakness of the economic pillar of Economic and Monetary Union, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU adopt a series of six legislative texts (five regulations and a directive) to strengthen the coordination of economic policies and fiscal discipline. Two texts specifically concern the Member States in the euro area: they provide for an increased regime of sanctions at an early stage to prevent public deficits and macroeconomic imbalances.