Architects of the Euro

Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union

Edited by Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes

Written by recognized experts in the history of European Monetary Union
Provides original archival and interview research
Focus on key but neglected figures in the design of European monetary union and examines their contributions and relevance of their ideas

Architects of the Euro

Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union

Edited by Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes

Description

Who were key figures in the making of European monetary union? Which ideas did they contribute to ensuring that monetary union would be sustainable? How prescient were they in identifying the necessary and sufficient foundations of a sustainable monetary union?

This book provides the first systematic historical examination of key architects of European monetary union in the period before its launch in 1999. Using original archival and interview research, it investigates the intellectual and career backgrounds of these architects, their networking skills, and their own doubts and reservations about the way in which monetary union was being constructed. In the light of the later Euro Area, Architects of the Euro deals critically with not just their contribution to the making of European monetary union but also their legacy. The book brings together a distinguished group of scholars working on the history of Economic and Monetary Union.

Architects of the Euro

Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union

Edited by Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes

Foreword, Jan Smets
1. Intellectuals as Policy Makers: Biography and the History of European Monetary Union, Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes
2. Robert Triffin: The Arch Monetarist in the Process of European Monetary Integration?, Ivo Maes and Eric Bussiere
3. Robert Marjolin: Securing the Common Market through Economic and Monetary Union, Katja Seidel
4. 1. Raymond Barre: Modernizing France through European Monetary Cooperation, David Howarth
5. Pierre Werner: A Visionary European and Consensus Builder, Elena Danescu
6. Roy Jenkins and the Importance of Top-Level Politics, Piers Ludlow
7. Hans Tietmeyer, Ethical Ordo-liberalism, and the Architecture of EMU: Getting the Fundamentals Right, Kenneth Dyson
8. Karl-Otto Pohl: The Pole Position, Harold James
9. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa: EMU as the Anchor Stone for Building a Federal Europe, Fabio Masini
10. Jacques Delors: Vision, Revisionism, and the Design of EMU, Dermot Hodson
11. Alexandre Lamfalussy: A Cassandra about Financial Stability, Ivo Maes
12. Contributions, Legacies, and Lessons, Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes

Architects of the Euro

Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union

Edited by Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes

Author Information

Kenneth Dyson is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and Research Professor in European Political Studies at Cardiff University. His research interests encompass the European state, German policies and politics, comparative and international political economy, and the EU. His recent publication States, Debt, and Power: 'Saints' and 'Sinners' in European History and Integration (OUP, 2014) won the UACES Best Book Prize.

Ivo Maes is Senior Advisor at the Research Department of the National Bank of Belgium and a professor, Robert Triffin Chair, at the Universite Catholique de Louvain and at ICHEC Brussels Business School. His books include Economic Thought and the Making of European Monetary Union (Edward Elgar, 2002), Half a Century of European Financial Integration: From the Rome Treaty to the 21st Century (Mercatorfonds, 2007); and co authored Alexandre Lamfalussy, The Wise Man of the Euro: A Conversation with Christophe Lamfalussy, with Sabine Peters (LannooCampus, 2014).

Contributors:

Eric Bussière, the Université Paris IV - Sorbonne.
Elena Danescu, University of Luxembourg.
Kenneth Dyson , Cardiff University.
Dermot Hodson, Birbeck College, University of London.
David Howarth, University of Luxembourg.
Harold James, Princeton University.
Piers Ludlow, London School of Economics.
Ivo Maes, National Bank of Belgium and the Université Catholique de Louvain.
Fabio Masini, University of Rome III.
Katja Seidel, University of Westminster.

Architects of the Euro

Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union

Edited by Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes

Reviews and Awards

"This book is a success because it illuminates the role of the architects' stores of knowledge, skills, passions and interests in the process of European Monetary Unification . . . the book is relevant to the current challenges facing the Euro Area and, with it, the lives of the millions of people inhabiting it." --Lilia Costabile, Journal of Economics

"Architects of the Euro is a rich and stimulating book." --Giorgio La Malfa, The Journal of European Economic History

"[The authors] demonstrate the value of sophisticated syntheses of policy analysis and intellectual history." - Foreign Affairs

"The originality of Architects of the Euro, edited by Dyson and Maes, is that it brings out the vital role played by ten senior officials and policy-oriented economists, well chosen by the editors, in starting the process towards the euro. Despite major differences in views, these architects had a shared motivation to start with what appeared at the time both economically justified and politically feasible, leaving the completion of the work-in-progress for later challenges." - Niels Thygesen, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Copenhagen, and former member of the Delors Committee

"This remarkable volume by eminent scholars will help readers to better understand what the intellectual underpinning of the euro was and where it eventually proved wanting. It shows well how unprepared the system was to deal with the recent crisis and what are the challenges to fix it." - André Sapir, Professor of Economics at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium,and former economic advisor to the president of the European Commission

"It is often claimed, perhaps particularly by its detractors, that European Economic and Monetary Union was mainly created by an elite. This book records the identity, thinking and objectives of such key protagonists. It is an important study of political economy, how ideas and structures develop, an essential part of the political and economic history of our times. I am delighted to have played a minor role in the exercise, put together by Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes, to deploy the best historians of political economic thought, to illuminate the process by which EMU was constructed." - Charles Goodhart FBA, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and former chief economist at the Bank of England