Franco-German cooperation and the rescuing of the Eurozone

This article analyzes the effect of Franco-German cooperation on Economic and Monetary Union reforms, negotiated between 2010 and 2015. We identify three causal mechanisms theorizing how Franco-German cooperation affected the outcomes of EMU negotiations, namely through (a) the elimination of issues from the negotiation agenda; (b) the identification of compromise solutions or the provision of compensations; and (c) the power-based imposition of joint agreements on other member states. We use process tracing to analyze almost the full sample of contested issues included in the ‘EMU Positions’ dataset.

Our findings underline that France and Germany indeed eliminated issues to which they were jointly opposed, but they also positively shaped the agenda by proposing compromises and offering compensation. No evidence supports the power-focused perspective of a Franco-German directoire.

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This article is part of a Special Issue of this journal on 'Decision-Making During the Eurozone Crisis'.