Reshaping the external constraint. Franco Modigliani, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa and the EMS, 1977-1993

During a decade of stagflation in the 1970s, a sea of changes on the interna-tional stage led to major macroeconomic imbalances that gave central bankers a different role in relation to governments and policy-makers. In Europe, this coin-cided with the relaunching of the project for European integration. The Italian case shows how governments and central bankers interacted in shaping adjustment strategies. The Bank of Italy had a pivotal role in shaping the country's economic policies, relying on its capacity for economic analysis. The adjustment strategy formulated in the "Pandolfi Plan" of 1978 was conceived largely by an economist at the Bank of Italy, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa. Further developing analyses conducted jointly with Franco Modigliani the previous year, the plan focused on the macroeconomic effects of high labour costs in the wake of a full ("100% and plus") wage indexing and rising government deficits. The policy proposal revolved around a few targets, namely investments and economic growth, and an explicit principle of fairness in the labour market. The Pandolfi Plan pledged to Italy's en-during participation in the European integration process by combining economic development with adhesion to the "European choice", which meant joining the European Monetary System (EMS). The European agreements governing EMS membership replaced the standard external economic constraints, i.e. the balance of payments and exchange rate, with a new kind of semi-legal external constraint ingrained in the governance structure of the European Community. The nature of this new semi-legal external constraint as a fiscal discipline mechanism eventually emerged more clearly with the Maastricht Treaty.

Imported or Home Grown? The 1992-3 EMS Crisis

Using newly assembled data on foreign exchange market intervention, we construct a daily index of exchange market pressure during the 1992-3 crisis in the European Monetary System. Using this index, we pinpoint when and where the crisis was most severe. Our analysis focuses on a neglected factor in the crisis: the role of the weak dollar in intra-EMS tensions. We provide new evidence of the contribution of a falling dollar-Deutschmark exchange rate to pressure on EMS currencies.

Return to Belgium

In 1977, Robert Triffin decided to return to Belgium. He put forward two reasons: the invitation for a visiting professorship at the University of Louvain and, “most of all,” the opportunity to be involved, as an adviser at the European Commission, in the process of European monetary union. Triffin’s return to Belgium coincided closely with the advent of Roy Jenkins as European Commission president, who consulted Triffin regarding his monetary integration plans. Triffin was enthusiastic about the European Monetary System (EMS), which was established in 1979. With the support of the European Commission, especially Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, he organized four international conferences on different aspects of its functioning. During the 1980s, Triffin promoted the development of the private European Currency Unit (ECU) market, especially the establishment of an ECU clearing system.

8. The Revival of European Integration (the Mid-1970s to the Late 1980s)

This chapter examines the revival of European integration from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. It first considers leadership changes in the European Commission before turning to the European Council and the European Monetary System (EMS), the Commission’s southern enlargements, and the British budget rebate. It then discusses leadership changes in the Commission from 1981 to 1982, the Single European Act (SEA), and the European Council meeting at Fontainebleau in June 1984. It also looks at the initiatives of various Commission presidents such as Roy Jenkins, Gaston Thorn, and Jacques Delors. Finally, it describes the implementation of the SEA, widely seen as the big breakthrough in the revival of European integration.

Making a virtue of necessity? The economics and politics of the ECB’s monetary policy, 1999-2019

The ECB could hardly afford political neutrality, even in the monetary union’s “honeymoon phase”. Being a stateless central bank entailed striking compromises between confl icting (national) monetary policy preferences. However, such compromises would often be reached at the expense of theoretical consistency and to the detriment of coherence in the ECB’s monetary policy strategy. And, perhaps inevitably, they would also bear the mark of the dominant partner in the European Monetary System, that is prior to the establishment of the monetary union, now also being the biggest subscriber to the ECB’s capital. Political neutrality and, for that matter, monetary activism on the part of the ECB -as well as liquidity in the euro-area- were largely inadequate during the euro area crisis, especially in its early phase. They were subsequently increased, but at a slow pace and in a preferential fashion, that is, largely to the benefi t of the banking industry. Eventually, the ECB did try to make a virtue of necessity; yet, this could only go so far. Thus, the ECB has reluctantly become the only game in town, its reluctance being mostly associated with the overriding concerns of certain national central banks of the Eurosystem, most notably the Bundesbank; namely, ensuring monetary dominance, averting (at that time illusory) infl ationary dangers, preventing moral hazard, enforcing structural reforms and, not least, fending off any, indirectly emerging, type of transfer union. Therefore, the ECB could have no great ambitions; its lonely game was unlikely to produce a medal-winning policy maker in the world championship of central banking.