Fait accompli and total optimism

According to the Treaty on European Union (TEU), Article 107 (1), ‘The ESCB [European System of Central Banks] shall be composed of the ECB and of the national central banks.’ This wording makes clear that the authors of the treaty had assumed that all member states of the EU would join the monetary union – an overly optimistic assumption, as it turned out. As we shall see in the present chapter such a priori optimism is (or was until recently) a characteristic feature of the political culture of European integration – and one reason why crises always find EU leaders unprepared. When the euro was introduced, an American political economist wrote: ‘Prudence might have counselled that the European Union take certain steps well before the creation of the euro area’ (Henning 2000: 41). He was referring to what economist Charles Wyplosz has called the ‘dark secret’ of monetary union: the fact that the relevant article of the Maastricht Treaty is so ambiguous that it is not clear who is actually responsible for the exchange rate of the euro, see chapter 1. Even Wim Duisenberg – who as (first) president of the ECB should have been better informed about the financial conditions of would-be members of the monetary union – was absolutely delighted when, in January 2001, Greece adopted the euro. Like many other Euro-enthusiasts the Dutch central banker was convinced that for the sake of European integration it was important to have as many countries as possible in the monetary union. Thus, possible risks were totally ignored (Lévy 2012). These are only few examples of the unconcerned, not to say reckless, attitude which until recently prevailed among EU leaders – not just in monetary policy but in all areas of European competence. Henning, like the majority of American experts, counselled prudence, but the truth is that prudential reasoning is foreign to the Monnet strategy of fait accompli which, as mentioned in chapter 1, goes back to the beginnings of European integration.