The long road to EMU: the economic and political reasoning behind Maastricht

Abstract

This paper aims to examine whether the economic and political reasoning behind Maastricht is consistent with earlier approaches to monetary integration. In doing so, it revisits the intellectual debate on monetary integration in Europe at different stages. It concludes that Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as agreed at Maastricht reflected a compromise between two different but converging preferences, in the context of the experience of the European Monetary System (EMS) and other developments in national and European politics as well as in economic thought, on the role of monetary policy and institutions; the fall of the Berlin Wall may have added a new political dimension that might have made it easier to agree on the blueprint and on the calendar for the realisation of EMU. The various (political and economic) motivations for the convergence of initially different views on the role of monetary policy and successive interpretations of the objectives of EMU are discussed within the wider context of the process of European integration.