"In 1962 the European Economic Community published a study on the instruments of monetary policy in the countries of the EEC. This work has been widely used, both by the EEC and national monetary authorities, and in university, banking and financial circles. The Community, which at that time had just passed to the second stage of the transitional period, entered the final phase on 1 January 1970. The experience gained during the twelve years of the transitional period, the need for increasing integration in the final phase, and the transitional period, the need for increasing integration in the final phase, and the prospect of economic and monetary union decided upon at the Hague Conference in December 1969, highlighted the importance, for a satisfactory development of the Community, of the coordination of national monetary policies and the harmonisation of the instruments employed. The Monetary Committee therefore considered it appropriate to undertake a new study of the instruments of monetary policy in the Community countries, and a group of experts was given the task of examining, at a practical level, how instruments could be harmonized."--Preface.