European Monetary Union opt-ins and opt-outs: A comparison of Spain, Italy, Britain, and Denmark

This paper considers the common factors that led some European Union (EU) members to implement policy change to meet the Maastricht convergence criteria, or “opt-in”, and led other members to “opt-out” of European Monetary Union (EMU). This paper hypothesizes a chain of causation of three independent variables used to explain this variation. Specifically, strong affective public support for the EU, a consistent leadership commitment to EMU acting in a centripetal manner, and policy change enabled by a Kingdon (1995) “policy window”, leads to EMU membership in January 1999. Through a comparative case study of Italy and Spain, which opted-in, and Britain and Denmark, with opted-out of this major initiative, this paper seeks to compare and explain the behavior of these members in the 1990s. The paper concludes that strong affective public support, combined with leadership acting in a centripetal manner, allowed for a Kingdonian “policy window” to open in Italy and Spain, and not in Britain or Denmark.