A Europe Made of Money - The Emergence of the European Monetary System

A Europe Made of Money is a new history of the making of the European Monetary System (EMS), based on extensive archive research. Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol highlights two long-term processes in the monetary and economic negotiations in the decade leading up to the founding of the EMS in 1979. The first is a transnational learning process involving a powerful, networked European monetary elite that shaped a habit of cooperation among technocrats. The second stresses the importance of the European Council, which held regular meetings between heads of government beginning in 1974, giving EEC legitimacy to monetary initiatives that had previously involved semisecret and bilateral negotiations. The interaction of these two features changed the EMS from a fairly trivial piece of administrative business to a tremendously important political agreement. The inception of the EMS was greeted as one of the landmark achievements of regional cooperation, a major leap forward in the creation of a unified Europe. Yet Mourlon-Druol's account stresses that the EMS is much more than a success story of financial cooperation. The technical suggestions made by its architects reveal how state elites conceptualized the larger project of integration. And their monetary policy became a marker for the conception of European identity. The unveiling of the EMS, Mourlon-Druol concludes, represented the convergence of material interests and symbolic, identity-based concerns.

Introduction: Multilevel Governance, History, and Monetary Cooperation 1. European Monetary Cooperation, 1945–1974: Background and Debates 2. Shifting Away from the Werner Approach, May 1974–May 1975 3. EMU off the Agenda? June 1975–June 1976 4. Economic Rapprochement, Monetary Standstill, July 1976–June 1977 5. Conflicting Options, July 1977–March 1978 6. A Semisecret Negotiation, Late March–Mid-July 1978 7. Chasing the Ghosts of Failed Negotiations, Mid-July–Late September 1978 8. A False Start, October 1978–March 1979 Conclusions: The Emergence of a European Bloc Acknowledgments A Note on Sources Cited in the Notes Notes Sources Index