Mody, A. (2014) “In response: Aligning national interests in Europe’s monetary union – answering comments on my Opinion ‘Europe has wasted a good crisis’“, Bruegel Institute, 01 Ιουλίου.
In my opinion published on Friday, I argued that a growing east-west divide, a core-periphery rift, the rise of extremist parties and the adoption of extremist rhetoric and their policy agenda by the mainstream parties are reshaping the concept of Europe. This received some extremely interesting comments which I would like to address.
The comments raise some very important issues both of analysis and for thinking about the scenarios that lie ahead. It is true, as one commentator notes, that an alternative to the “falling forward” theory was, indeed, theso-called “crowning” theory. The “crowning” view, espoused mainly by the Germans and the Dutch, argued that the monetary union should come after a political union—as the crowning achievement of an economically and politically-integrated Europe.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who had signed on, in principle, to the introduction of a common currency, went to the inter-governmental conference at Maastricht in December 1991, with the presumption that no date would be set for introducing the euro because he had been advised that the preconditions for a monetary union were not in place. At Maastricht, the matter was apparently discussed between Chancellor Kohl, the French President Francois Mitterrand, and Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. The leaders emerged from that meeting with a target date. The French and the Italians, at least implicitly, favored and adopted the “falling forward” view of European monetary integration. An incomplete monetary union would eventually be completed through necessary adjustments and compromises. And thus that came to be the guiding vision.
Σχετικές αναρτήσεις:
- Haliassos, M. (2014) “The Fiscal Crisis as a Crisis in Trust“, Goethe University Frankfurt, Center for Financial Studies and SAFE, Frankfurt: 12 Μαΐου.
- Bauchowitz, St. (2014) “Entrepreneurship in Southern Europe: Symptom or Solution to the Euro Crisis?“, LSE Eurocrisis in the Press, 14 Φεβρουαρίου.
- Koutsogeorgopoulou, V., Matsaganis, M., Leventi, Schneider, J. D. (2013) “Fairly Sharing the Social Impact of the Crisis in Greece“, OECD, Paris.