[...]The paper starts by providing a brief review of the EMS crisis, emphasising that the most interesting period might be the ‘post-EMS’ crisis of 1993-95. It then reviews in section 2 the crisis factors, comparing the EMS crisis to today’s euro crisis. Section 3 outlines the main analytical issue, namely the potential instability of high public debt within and outside a monetary union. Section 4 then compares the pressure on public finance coming from the crises for the case of Italy. Section 5 uses data on ‘foreign currency’ debt to disentangle expectations of devaluation/inflation from expectations of default. Section 6 concludes.[...]