Wonderful -- I have been a part of this subreddit for many years and have not before now had the opportunity to give back.

To answer your second question: Yes, in a way. In the 1970s a spirit of cooperation led to three different mechanisms for monetary union and economic cooperation in the then-European Community (EC).

Primarily, the European Exchange Rate Agreement in 1973 'linked' the member states' currencies together within a band of exchange rates pegged to the German deutschmark, deviating no more than 2.25% +- from each other as agreed in the 1972 Basle Agreement (the Basle Agreement, though the basis for the pegged rate, was not official Union policy, but rather an agreement amongst central banks . Hence the distinction between 1973 and 1972) This is frequently referred to as "the Snake" due to the appearance the currencies made in moving together in appreciation and depreciation of value, thereby appearing as a snake on a time graph. In this system, of course, all of the countries retained their national currencies, but the Snake, along with the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1979 stabilized those currencies by pegging their values to each other. This first attempt at a unified currency scheme created a lot of conflict between the member states, as inter-union (European Parliament elections returning a new majority, eg) and world events activated pain points in some countries and eased pain points in others, depending on their economic models (industry in Germany versus agriculture in France, eg).

Within just six weeks of adoption, both the British and Irish pounds withdrew. The Irish lira followed shortly thereafter. By 1974, there were two clear "tiers" of currencies, strong (Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands) and weak (France, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark). This prompted France and Belgium to ask for a two-tiered system to ease the stress caused by the differences in valuations. This proposal was vetoed by Germany. By 1975 the Marjolin Committee set up by the European Commission concluded that the Snake had not made a substantive, positive difference between the members and that Europe was "No nearer to EMU (European Monetary Union) than in 1969."

Later attempts to revive monetary union through the EMS created the European Currency Unit (ECU) which was to be fixed and against which member currencies (critically, the states again kept their own currencies) would be valued. If you noticed a similarity in the acronym and the French écu, you were spot on. Both the proposed consolidated EMS and the ECU name itself were designed to be more favorable to France, to keep them invested in the system. France had previously joined the Snake and withdrawn from it -- twice. This had some greater level of success, and the ECU is generally considered to be the direct predecessor to the euro.

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Source:

The Choice for Europe by Andrew Moravcsik