D. 286~301 – The Roman Emperor Diocletian reforms the coinage of the realm,setting up a single currency and establishing a primitive gold standard.

C.755 – Pepin the Short , King of the Franks , introduces the Silver Denier , a coin that remained Europe’s standard currency unit for the rest of the Middle Ages.

C. 755 – The King of Mercia in central England issued silver pennies that eventually become known as “ Sterlings “.

1251~1252 – Italian city-states cornered the gold trade with North Africa; Genoa, Florence and Venice mint their own gold coins, which were widely used and imitated. 

The 13th. Century – Italian banking families promoted the widespread use of bills of exchange , creating a banking network from England to the Urals.

C.1460 – Venice and Milan pioneered heavier coins with more realistic portraits and similar coins appeared in Switzerland, Germany, France and England. One type of coin, the silver thaler, becomes world famous , its name is translated into English as “Dollar”.

The 17th. Century – As work for wages became more popular , people became more mobile and consumer markets expanded. Coins gradually replaced barter in everyday transactions.

1661 – Sweden’s Stockholm Bank issued Europe’s first freely circulated bank note. But it issues too many , and a government commission sentenced the bank’s founder to death for mismanagement. the sentence was commuted to a term in prison.

1789~1796 – Following the French Revolution, the government began issuing assignats and paper bonds that were redeemable for confiscated church and royal lands. They come to be used as currency, and the government produced 40 billion of them, causing them to lose 97 percent of their value.

1797~1821 – England’s wars with the United States and Napoleonic France cause a depletion of gold reserve, forcing the bank of England to suspend gold payments for paper money in what became know as the Restricted Period .

1865 – France , Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Greece and Bulgaria form the Latin Monetary Union, standardising coinage in the countries. Unified Germany and Italy also adopt single-coinage systems.

1872 – Denmark, Norway and Sweden establish the Scandinavian Monetary Union, setting up a common coinage.

1873 – Germany, France and the United States adopt a gold standard.

1914 – World War 1: resulted in the depletion of gold reserves in France and Germany and the collapse of the gold standard.

1928 – Europe returned to the gold standard, but the Great Depression causes it to collapse again , and by 1936 no Western nation’s currency was tied to gold.

1944 – At a conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire , 44 countries agree to set up a dollar-gold standard and fixed-exchange-rate regime, which lasted for 27 years.

1958 – The European Economic Community , the brainchild of Jean Monnet, was formed with monetary union as an eventual objective.

1971~1973 – The international monetary system shifts to floating exchange rates . European Community members set up a system : the so called snake in a tunnel ~ to limit the fluctuation of their currencies.

1979 – The European Monetary Systems (EMS) came into force; members were required to restrict fluctuations of their currencies. The European currency unit ( ECU ) was introduced as a unit of European Community bookkeeping.

1989 – Jacques Delors , then European Commission President, drew up a three-stage process to achieve economic and monetary union.

1990 – Phase I of Economic and Monetary union (EMU) came into force; it lifted most restrictions on capital movements between member nations and increased co-ordination of economic and monetary policies. 

1991 – The Maastricht European Council reached agreement on a draft treaty on European Union, which pointed to the introduction of a single European currency by 1999.

1994 – Phase II . The monetary union begins with the establishment of the European Monetary Institute.

March 1998 –The European Commission recommended the launch of a single currency , called the Euro, on January 1st. 1999. The eleven countries would be Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Luxembourg.