Regular meetings of heads of state and government seem, in 2012, a common feature of international affairs. About forty years ago, however, such meetings did not really exist: ad hoc summits were the rule. Comparing the emergence of the European Council in 1974 and the G7 in 1975, this article explains why and how summitry has become routine in international politics.
This article explores three central issues of the European Council’s development, from its inception in 1974 until its constitutionalisation in 1986: the need for an approach encompassing globalisation and Europeanisation processes; the need to coordinate Community affairs and political cooperation; and finally the privileged capacity of heads of government to fulfil the two above-mentioned aims.
This article focuses on the role of central bankers in European monetary cooperation, from the failure of the Werner Plan to the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS).
This article sets out the state of the field, outlines some of the problems/methodological challenges to historical research on the 1970s and finally sketches some potential research directions.
I will be giving a paper at the next symposium of the research programme “Digital Humanities Luxembourg” (DHLU 2013), “Reading historical sources in …
This chapter explores one of the very distinctive features of the organisation of G7 summits, namely the group of personal representatives, or ‘sherpas’. Following a prosopographical approach, the study highlights a number of common characteristics among sherpas, in spite of the potential heterogeneity of this group. It further underscores the ambiguity of the G7 as an institution as well as the web of complex relations in which the G7 has embedded itself over time.
Although its inception gave birth to lively debates and that it influenced the mode of decision making in the EEC, this chapter shows how the European Council found its place relatively smoothly in the Community decision-making process.
How did the emergence of the European Council (EUCO) affect an established order in a specific European policy area? This chapter shows the capacity of the EUCO, created in December 1974, to steer and change elements of the established order in one of these policy areas, namely European Political Co-operation (EPC).
Within the monetary sphere, the 1970s were characterised by the opposition between two strategies for integration at the European level: the “economists” vs. “monetarists” debate. This chapter concentrates on the specific case of the monetary initiatives taken by France in 1974 and 1975.