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François Mitterrand

Rethinking Franco-German Relations: a Historical Perspective

Franco-German relations as the ‘engine’ of European integration are widely perceived to have stalled in recent years. This policy contribution assesses what the Franco-German relationship can achieve, what its shortcomings are, and what it means for the wider governance of the euro area and the European Union.

Institutionalizing Trust? Regular Summitry in the 70s-80s (with N. Bonhomme)

This chapter argues that summits tried to foster trust both “internally” and “externally”: summitry aimed at developing not only trust among the leaders, but also crucially trust with regard to the Western (economic) system. These two ambitions represented a vital transformation of the international system in the 1970s and 1980s.

Less than a Permanent Secretariat, More than an Ad-hoc Preparatory Group: a Prosopography of the G7 Personal Representatives, 1975-1991

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.