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).
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.
A Europe Made of Money is a new history of the making of the European Monetary System (EMS). This account stresses that the EMS is much more than a success story of financial cooperation. The technical suggestions made by its architects reveal how state elites conceptualized the larger project of integration. And their monetary policy became a marker for the conception of European identity.
The EMS, created in 1979, is part of the prehistory of the euro: it was a first concrete attempt at organising the European Union’s – that was still then the European Economic Community (EEC) – currency relations. And the discussions that took place then bear a striking resemblance to our current predicament.