Architects of the Euro: Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union
Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes
Abstract
The book examines key intellectuals who were directly and actively involved in the process of designing a European monetary union that would be sustainable. Their role was distinguishable from that of the political founders and drivers of this process and from that of expert advisers. They were embedded in the process of giving substance to monetary union and gained influence through their formidable resources of character and intellect. The selected architects include Raymond Barre, Jacques Delors, Roy Jenkins, Alexandre Lamfalussy, Robert Marjolin, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Karl-Otto Pöhl, Han ... More
The book examines key intellectuals who were directly and actively involved in the process of designing a European monetary union that would be sustainable. Their role was distinguishable from that of the political founders and drivers of this process and from that of expert advisers. They were embedded in the process of giving substance to monetary union and gained influence through their formidable resources of character and intellect. The selected architects include Raymond Barre, Jacques Delors, Roy Jenkins, Alexandre Lamfalussy, Robert Marjolin, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Karl-Otto Pöhl, Hans Tietmeyer, Robert Triffin, and Pierre Werner. The book looks at their intellectual biographies, the ideas to which they became committed, their network-building skills, and their practical involvement in the issues of monetary integration and union. The principal emphasis is on their individual contributions, their legacies as seen from the vantage point of the Euro Area crisis, and the prescience and adequacy of their views about the appropriate foundations of EMU. The book considers the strengths and limits of intellectual biography and the thorny question of the roles of structure and agency in historical explanation. It also reflects on the question of the architects’ share of blame in the design flaws of European monetary union.
Keywords:
EMU,
architects,
Raymond Barre,
Jacques Delors,
Roy Jenkins,
Alexandre Lamfalussy,
Robert Marjolin,
Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa,
Karl-Otto Pöhl,
Hans Tietmeyer,
Robert Triffin,
Pierre Werner
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198735915 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735915.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Kenneth Dyson, editor
Research Professor, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University
Ivo Maes, editor
Senior Advisor, Research Department of the National Bank of Belgium and a professor, Robert Triffin Chair, at the Université Catholique de Louvain
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