Market confidence about EMU going ahead on time remains high, according to the weekly JP Morgan EMU index. It shows strong confidence that a large group of states will move forward to EMU in the first group on January 1st, 1999.
France and Belgium - and by extension Luxembourg - are seen as certainties to join monetary union along with Germany. Investors also remain confident that Spain, Portugal, Finland, Italy and Sweden will join in the first wave. Ireland's rating, at 59 per cent, is up slightly from last week, although it appears, if anything, to underrate the widespread confidence in the markets that Ireland will join.
The calculator is based on the forward interest rate swaps market, in which investors swap future floating-rate interest payments for fixed-rate ones. JP Morgan uses the resulting calculations to estimate investors' expectations about whether a state will join monetary union.
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