4 - Central Banks, Governments, and the European Monetary Unification Process

Summary

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

It was not without hesitation that I accepted the challenge of writing this essay on the evolving relationship between central banks and governments in the European monetary unification process. For one thing, I am not a historian and the formal, narrowly defined beginning of this process goes back to the Hague summit in 1969, when the heads of state or of government “agreed that on the basis of the memorandum presented by the European Commission on 12 February 1969 and in close collaboration with the Commission a plan by stages should be drawn up by the EC Council of ministers during 1970 with a view to the creation of an economic and monetary union.” Anything that was conceived more than thirty years ago deserves careful scholarly treatment calling on all the virtues of a reliable historian – even if the scholar is not a professional historian. This is the more so since European monetary cooperation in a broader sense began with the establishment of the European Payments Union in 1950, well before the emergence of the Common Market and of the European Community. It is arguable that neither the decision taken in The Hague, nor the subsequent Werner Report, nor indeed the long history of the monetary unification process, which has led us to where we are today, can be fully comprehended without referring back to the early 1950s. Much of this scholarly work has already been accomplished and accomplished well.