Architects of the Euro: Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union

Abstract
The book examines key intellectuals who were directly and actively involved in the process of designing a European monetary union that would be sustainable. Their role was distinguishable from that of the political founders and drivers of this process and from that of expert advisers. They were embedded in the process of giving substance to monetary union and gained influence through their formidable resources of character and intellect.

The selected architects include Raymond Barre, Jacques Delors, Roy Jenkins, Alexandre Lamfalussy, Robert Marjolin, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Karl-Otto Pöhl, Hans Tietmeyer, Robert Triffin, and Pierre Werner.

The book looks at their intellectual biographies, the ideas to which they became committed, their network-building skills, and their practical involvement in the issues of monetary integration and union. The principal emphasis is on their individual contributions, their legacies as seen from the vantage point of the Euro Area crisis, and the prescience and adequacy of their views about the appropriate foundations of EMU.

The book considers the strengths and limits of intellectual biography and the thorny question of the roles of structure and agency in historical explanation. It also reflects on the question of the architects’ share of blame in the design flaws of European monetary union.

Table of Contents

1 Intellectuals as Policy-Makers (Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes)
2 Robert Triffin (Ivo Maes and Eric Bussière)
3 Robert Marjolin (Katja Seidel)
4 Raymond Barre (David Howarth)
5 Pierre Werner (Elena Danescu)
6 Roy Jenkins (N. Piers Ludlow)
7 Hans Tietmeyer, Ethical Ordo-Liberalism, and the Architecture of EMU (Kenneth Dyson)
8 Karl-Otto Pöhl (Harold James)
9 Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa (Fabio Masini)
10 Jacques Delors (Dermot Hodson)
11 Alexandre Lamfalussy (Ivo Maes)
12 Contributions, Legacies, and Lessons (Kenneth Dyson and Ivo Maes)