Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-15T19:24:06.498Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2023

Michael Heine
Affiliation:
Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin
Hansjörg Herr
Affiliation:
Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht
Get access

Summary

With the creation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999, the participating member states took a bold step towards further economic and political integration. The development followed the logic of European integration since the Second World War – start with economic integration and political integration will follow. However, the creation of a monetary union implies that member states are giving up national sovereignty and establishing supranational institutions. At the very least a supranational central bank is needed to manage the EMU's monetary policy.

The preparation for the implementation of monetary union was far from complete. The European Central Bank (ECB) was created but other powerful supranational institutions in the EMU were missing. A vacuum developed with insufficient institutions in the EMU to manage its macroeconomic development while reducing room for manoeuvre for macroeconomic policy at the national level. The history of EMU is a history of the ECB struggling with the incompleteness of the monetary union. Cooperation among states could have reduced the lack of institutions in the EMU. However, cooperation was insufficient and became interwoven with the struggle of different member countries to increase or defend their influence and enforce their own economic policy strategy. Germany as the biggest country in the EMU followed hegemonic ambitions. However, its power and willingness to stabilize the whole monetary union was incomplete.

With this in mind, we analyse the history of the EMU and especially the policy and role of the ECB in the framework of macroeconomic management. The first draft of the book was finished in early 2020, just as the Covid-19 crisis hit Europe. We then added Chapter 13 to provide some analysis of the early response to the crisis – as far as this is possible in June 2020.

We would like to thank Alison Howson for support and debates and for her encouragement to write this book. We also thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Last but not least, we thank Lukas Handley for his technical support.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Agenda Publishing
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@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.

Available formats
×

Save book 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 Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

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.

Available formats
×