Architects of the euro

Intellectuals in the making of European Monetary Union∗

Bibliographic Data

ID9911544
AuthorsStefan Auer (0000-0002-2722-3090, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume93
Issue3
Pages737-738
Publication date2017-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ia/iix065
OpenAlexW2610493734
LanguageEN
Citations received7

The edifice that is the euro is not fit for purpose. It was meant to bring the nations of Europe closer together and enhance their prosperity, yet it is pulling them apart and reinforcing the differences between the European Union's prosperous core and its peripheries. It was meant to ‘be a means of anchoring more firmly a more powerful united Germany into Europe’ (p. 3), yet it resulted in Germany becoming its dominant power. What to make of the architects of the euro then? Are they to be blamed for its many imperfections, or applauded for ensuring that the project went ahead in the first place? Ten accomplished authors were assembled by Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes to consider these questions, by evaluating the intellectual contribution and the political impact of ten architects, who, we are told, ‘occupied the difficult terrain between often very constraining and unwelcome political constraints and the frequently conflicting prescriptions of professional economists’ (p. v). We find the usual suspects here: passionate proponents of a post-national Europe, such as Robert Triffin, Robert Marjolin and Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who thought of the euro ‘as a tool to challenge national sovereignty while waiting for some kind of political union’ (p. 193). This approach was characteristic of the so-called ‘monetarists’, who believed that monetary integration ‘would help promote economic convergence’ (p. 20), which in turn would result in a stronger political union. The ‘economists’, by contrast, such as Hans Tietmeyer and Karl-Otto Pöhl, were convinced that both economic convergence and political unity must precede the creation of the single European currency for the project to work. And then there were those who tried to combine these two competing approaches. The tireless ‘visionary and consensus builder’, Pierre Werner, attempted ‘to draw a line midway between the view that monetary union is the crowning glory of European integration and the view that would turn it into the virtually all-powerful engine driving integration’ (p. 108). The winning formula, in typical EU fashion, came from the man whose ‘economic eclecticism’ resulted in a ‘blurred vision’ of the European Monetary Union (p. 227), Jacques Delors. It is Delors and his constructive ambiguity, captured in the idea of a ‘European federation of nation states’ (p. 228), which prevailed. And it is Delors who ‘can claim credit for succeeding where his predecessors at the European Commission fell short’ (p. 229)

Convergence (economics · Economic and monetary union · Economic history · Economics · European integration · European union · International trade · Macroeconomics · Political economy · Political science · Political union · Politics · Prosperity · Sociology · Sovereignty · European Monetary and Fiscal Policies · Law

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