from Part I - The Historical and Institutional Background
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2020
Chapter 1 describes the path that brought to the current European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In contrast to a common tradition and culture, based on largely similar philosophical and religious foundations, Europe has a history of fierce opposition and wars among national states that culminated in World War II. An important impulse to some kind of European cooperation came exactly from the attempt to counter this tradition of conflicts, even if the past was still weighing. This largely explains the long process through which European institutions have reached their current state as well as their “incompleteness.” The cooperation evolved from the European Coal and Steel Community (1951), having a limited coverage, but active inter-country coordination and cooperation and limits to free market, to the European Economic Community (1957), with a larger coverage, but a free-market orientation in all fields. This partially changed with the Maastricht Treaty (originating the European Union(EU) and the EMU), with the introduction of common monetary policy and some constraints on national fiscal policies (1992). The former now gathers 28 countries. The latter had only 11 members when it started in 1999 and has now enlarged to 19.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.