EURECON · The Making of a Lopsided Union: Economic Integration in the European Economic Community, 1957-1992

The project investigates European policymakers’ views about how to make the European EconomicCommunity (EEC) fit for a monetary union. It will thus assess the origins of the issues that are currentlybedevilling the EU.From the EEC creation in 1957 to the decision to create the euro in 1992, several proposals were tabledto improve the functioning of the EEC as a possible currency area. Five interconnected domains are crucialto achieve economic integration in a currency union, and were continuously discussed before 1992:macroeconomic policy coordination, fiscal transfers, capital market integration, banking regulation, anddeepening of the common/single market. The project will provide the first historical appraisal of theseproposals and debates, and identify the dynamics of political and economic trade-offs and compromises,shifting priorities, and alternative approaches abandoned at the time but recycled later.The project intertwines international, legal, political, and economic history approaches in order toprovide a thorough portrait of European policymakers’ paradigms, goals, and constraints in envisioning aneconomic union in a changing global context. It relies on pioneering multilateral, multi-archival researchanalysing material from all member states and EEC institutions.The project also intends to encourage the study of the critical influence of non-EEC and non-state actorsand factors on the European decision-making level. To this end, the PI will lead a team of two PhD studentsand two Postdocs to explore specific case studies involving commercial banks, big business, trade unions andthe evolution of economic thinking.The project aims to link the usually insulated scholarships of European integration, postwar Europeanhistory, and national histories of economic policymaking. It will shed new light on the EU’s post-Maastrichtevolution and contextualise the Eurozone’s current challenges by providing a deeper understanding of itsfoundations.