EMU: The First Time Around
Martin Dedman recalls the background to European Monetary Union.
At the European Council meeting at Luxembourg in April 1980, the EEC heads of government abandoned the objective of completing the final stages of a European Monetary System, which would have included setting up a European Monetary Fund with central banking powers.
This original scheme to establish full economic and monetary union (EMU) within 10 years was hatched at the Hague Summit in December 1969. Both France and Germany initially enjoyed taking the credit for getting the scheme going. Only just over a year later in January 1971 each was blaming the other for having started Europe on its way to EMU without first having worked out where it would lead politically!
Why then did France and Germany embark upon the project in the 1970s? Even more curiously, why did President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl do the same thing twenty years later? Were lessons learnt from this first effort at EMU in the 1970s; are there parallels between the two initiatives?
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