In the last 15 years, many countries around the world have chosen to abandon , the independence of their national currencies and the ability to run a discretionary monetary policy. Some countries established currency board arrangements (CBAs) - Estonia in 1992, Lithuania in 1994, Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1997, and Argentina between 1991 and 2001. Others chose to dollarise unilaterally - Ecuador in 2000 and El Salvador in 2001. Still others - 11 member countries of the European Union - entered into a fully-fledged monetary union in 1999. More currency unions are in the pipeline - for example, the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the Middle East are expected to have a common currency in place by 2010. There has been sustained talk of an East Asian common currency, though that project appears to be slowly simmering on the backburner for now.
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