Central Bankers from the Failure of the Werner Plan to the creation of the EMS, 1974-1979
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). The role of central bankers in the run-up to the EMS is usually seen as limited : the main feature of the EMS negotiations was that the French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and the German chancellor Helmut Schmidt tried to bypass central bankers in order to reach an agreement to which they were otherwise opposed. Based on extensive research in British, French, German and EEC archives, this article stresses instead the continuum of cooperation, the progressive formation of a consensus around the Bundesbank interpretation of monetary policy, and the importance of seeing central bankers as members of a wider transnational monetary elite.
Reference
Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, “Central Bankers from the Failure of the Werner Plan to the creation of the EMS, 1974-1979,” Histoire, Économie & Société, December 2011, n°4, pp.39-46
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