Stuck on the wrong track: 20 years of euro disillusion, denial, and delusion

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Jörg Bibow
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Union ◽  
Maastricht Treaty ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Policy Regime ◽  
The Past ◽  
Asymmetric Growth

This contribution assesses the functioning of Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) during the first 20 years of the euro's existence. It argues that two formative intellectual currents converged at Maastricht to shape the design and reception of the euro regime: ordoliberalism and neoliberalism. Germany's ordoliberalism inspired and shaped the euro regime design. Neoliberalism fashioned the reception of what was agreed at Maastricht under the influence of Bundesbank dogma and power. As a product of the zeitgeist, Europe got stuck with a deeply flawed euro regime. The Maastricht Treaty institutionalized an asymmetric (growth-unfriendly) policy regime. This suited the macroeconomic mainstream well, fighting the ‘1970s stagflation war’ for the past 40 years. Twenty years of euro disillusion have produced the exact opposite: ‘stagdeflation.’

The Open Method Of Coordination: Obstinate Or Obsolete?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Union ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Open Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Open Method Of Coordination ◽  
Eu Governance ◽  
National Economic ◽  
New Form

Policy coordination in one form or another has been a feature of EU governance for the past two decades. Developing initially as a mechanism through which to coordinate national economic policies in the shadow of economic and monetary union (EMU), and extending to the coordination of employment policies through the European Employment Strategy, by the 2000s, policy coordination was being heralded as a new form of governance to be deployed to achieve the aims of the Lisbon Strategy of economic and social reform. Indeed, such was the interest in this new form of EU governance, it even acquired its own distinctive nomenclature—the ‘open method of coordination’ (OMC).

History of an Incomplete EMU

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Union ◽  
Banking Regulation ◽  
Maastricht Treaty ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Monetary Unions ◽  
Single Currency ◽  
Financial Transfers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Banking Regulation And Supervision

The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) created in 1992 by the Maastricht Treaty was famously incomplete. The decision to create a European single currency was taken without agreeing at the same time on the introduction of traditional accompanying features of some other monetary unions, namely: substantial financial transfers from richer to less developed regions, a credible framework for macroeconomic policy coordination, and European-wide provisions for banking regulation and supervision, to name but a few. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty set out an unfinished, or ‘lopsided union’, with the predominance of monetary union over economic union. The titles of the multiple reports published since 1992, such as the Van Rompuy report of 2012, ‘Towards a Genuine Economic and Monetary Union’, the Five Presidents’ Report of 2015, ‘Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union’, and the Commission’s ‘Reflection Paper on the Deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union’ of 2017 highlight this lopsidedness very well.

scholarly journals The Home Bias in the Process of European Integration

Equilibrium ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-152
Author(s):  
Anna Kozłowska
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Monetary Union ◽  
Home Bias ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
Common Market ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Customs Union ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
European Markets

This article aims to identify the relationship between the phenomenon of home bias and the process of European integration. During the past decades, European integration has evolved from a Common Market and the Customs Union, the Internal Market and Economic, and Monetary Union. Despite the improvements in integration of European markets, their potential is not fully exploited. Countries consumption baskets and inwestment portfolios still contain a predominant share of domestically produced products and domestic assets and national-born workers working in national labour markets. This is commonly known as the phenomenon of home bias.

The New Transformation of Europe: Arcana Imperii

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-185
Author(s):  
Leone Niglia
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Member State ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Monetary Union ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Union Law ◽  
The Past

Abstract The European Union is undergoing a structural transformation—a regression from integration through law as an anti-hegemonic project of equal membership to a condition in which member state orders, under a transformed European Union law, gravitate around unequal relations of subordination. Alongside the surveillance mechanisms that constrain the member states to conform to the requirements of the Economic and Monetary Union are private law arrangements (the “memoranda of understanding” qua “contracts”) that equally, and with greater force, produce subordination. Adopting a critical comparative-historical approach, this Article delves into Europe’s collective legal memory, and the past of colonial relations, to make intelligible the deployment of the memoranda contracts whose harsh terms have been dramatically changing the condition of the “debtor countries” for the worse; in the arcana of private law lies the truth about the changing condition of sovereign power in contemporary Europe and about the potential to change direction and counter the “jurisdomination” turn.

Economic and Monetary Union – A Model for Flexibility?

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 39-75
Author(s):  
John Usher
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Union ◽  
Maastricht Treaty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Community Institutions ◽  
Amsterdam Treaty ◽  
The Social ◽  
Differentiated Integration ◽  
To Receive

With hindsight, the Maastricht Treaty introduced two different forms of flexibility or differentiated integration. The Social Protocol took the form of a permission by all the Member States to a group of Member States to use Community institutions and legislation, which can be seen as the precursor of the general provisions on “closer cooperation” in the Amsterdam Treaty. On the other hand, the provisions on Economic and Monetary Union provide for some Member States to receive opt-outs or derogations from binding Treaty obligations and thus provide the model for the new Title of the EC Treaty on visa, asylum and immigration introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty.

Italy and the Fiscal Compact: Why does a country commit to permanent austerity?

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuela Moschella
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Union ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Maastricht Treaty ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Fiscal Discipline ◽  
Budgetary Policy ◽  
Italian Government ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Fiscal Compact ◽  
Limited Support

The paper investigates the factors that led the Italian government to accede to the Fiscal Compact in spite of its demanding requirements for the country’s budgetary policy. Specifically, the paper assesses the extent to which Italian government’s support for the Fiscal Compact was driven by the logic of the ‘vincolo esterno’ in a replication of the pattern that led Italy to sign the Maastricht Treaty. The paper finds only limited support to the ‘vincolo esterno’ argument. Rather than being motivated by domestic dysfunctions or socialization to the fiscal discipline doctrine, the Italian government acted mainly out of market punishment fears. Interestingly, however, three factors filtered such external pressures and contributed shaping government’s support for the new Treaty. First, the Economic and Monetary Union unfinished architecture, and in particular the lack of a European financial firewall, weakened opposition to the new Treaty. That is to say, the institutional context constrained the choices that Italian policymakers could pursue. Second, the pro-European orientations of government members contributed to elevating the new Treaty to a symbol of European integration. Finally, the Italian government confronted a quite large domestic win-set during the negotiations, as the parties supporting the Monti government also supported Italy’s participation to the new Treaty.

The Maastricht Treaty, Economic and Monetary Union and the neo-realist research programme

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Grieco
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Union ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Maastricht Treaty ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Community Institutions ◽  
Single European Act ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
Border Controls

With the Treaty on European Union, or the Maastricht Treaty, into force in November 1993, the member-states of the European Community (EC) appeared to be embarking on a far-reaching enterprise to enhance the authority of Community institutions. Continuing a process that had begun with the Single European Act (SEA), into force in 1987, Maastricht increased the powers of the European Parliament. It established mechanisms whereby EC countries were to seek to improve policy coordination in such diverse areas as social affairs, high technology, border controls, immigration, and anti-crime efforts. It committed the EC members to work toward the establishment of a common foreign and security policy. Most importantly, it laid out a path and timetable for qualified EC members to achieve Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by the end of the 1990s.

Reflections on the Maastricht Treaty

1992 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emile Noël
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Monetary Union ◽  
Maastricht Treaty ◽  
European Council ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Political Union ◽  
Political Decisions

The Conclusions Reached at the meeting of the European Council in Maastricht, on 9 — 10 December 1991, on economic and monetary union and also on political union, form an impressive and complex whole, in which undertakings of major importance coexist with other more timid ones. A detailed analysis would overstep the limits of an article. Moreover, there are still some problems to be cleared up before the final drafts are agreed, even if the principal political decisions have already been taken. The remarks which I would like to submit here will therefore deal more with general questions, and I will limit myself to the more significant provisions of the Maastricht agreements.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document