Before the euro’s arrival on the international financial scene in 1999, the only examples of countries with common currencies were neo-colonial francophone Africa and nineteenth-century precedents like the Latin American and Scandinavian monetary unions. The creation of the CFA franc, which gives France control of 65% of the CFA countries’ foreign-exchange reserves, combined currency convertibility with a grossly overvalued parity – pegged first to the French franc and now to the euro – as well as trade barriers.