The long road to EMU: The Economic and Political Reasoning behind Maastricht

Francisco Torres ()

No 23/2007, NIPE Working Papers from NIPE - Universidade do Minho

Abstract: This paper aims to examine whether the economic and political reasoning behind Maastricht is consistent with earlier approaches to monetary integration. In doing so, it revisits the intellectual debate on monetary integration in Europe at different stages. It concludes that Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as agreed at Maastricht reflected a compromise between two different but converging preferences, in the context of the experience of the European Monetary System (EMS) and other developments in national and European politics as well as in economic thought, on the role of monetary policy and institutions; the fall of the Berlin Wall may have added a new political dimension that might have made it easier to agree on the blueprint and on the calendar for the realisation of EMU. The various (political and economic) motivations for the convergence of initially different views on the role of monetary policy and successive interpretations of the objectives of EMU are discussed within the wider context of the process of European integration.

Keywords: Economic and Monetary Union; Bretton Woods; European integration; Werner plan; European Monetary System; inflation; convergence of preferences; epistemic communities; currency crisis; monetary sovereignty; Maastricht treaty; convergence requirements. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 E58 E61 E65 N14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www3.eeg.uminho.pt/economia/nipe/docs/2007/NIPE_WP_23_2007.PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The long road to EMU: The Economic and Political Reasoning behind Maastricht (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nip:nipewp:23/2007

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NIPE Working Papers from NIPE - Universidade do Minho Núcleo de Investigação em Políticas Económicas e Empresariais, Escola de Economia e Gestão, Universidade do Minho, P-4710-057 Braga, Portugal. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by NIPE ().