Monetary sovereignty is the power of the

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * '' Our ...

to exercise exclusive legal control over its

currency A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general ...

, broadly defined, by exercise of the following powers: *

Legal tender Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered ("tendered") in pa ...

– the exclusive authority to designate the legal tender forms of payment. * Issuance and retirement – the exclusive authority to control the issuance and retirement of the legal tender."The Legal Aspect of Money" by F.A. Mann, 5th edition, Oxford, 1992, pp. 460-78

Incidence of monetary sovereignty

Currently, nations such as the USA and Japan, which have autonomous central banks exercise monetary sovereignty. On the other hand, the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

nations within the

Eurozone The euro area, commonly called eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 19 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro ( €) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU polic ...

, have ceded much of their monetary sovereignty to the

European Central Bank The European Central Bank (ECB) is the prime component of the monetary Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's most important centra ...

References

{{economics-stub Currency Monetary reform Sovereignty Economic nationalism