Theme: “Why is Europe not ‘Coming Together’ in Response to the Euro Crisis?”- Where: SRH 3.316/3.350. LBJ School of Public Affairs (3rd floor)
- When: 12:15 to 1:30pm, Thursday 6th November
Abstract: Almost everyone agrees that the Eurozone was a one-legged giant; a monetary union lacking a political ‘leg’ to stabilise it. Moreover, both opponents of monetary union (e.g. Mrs Margaret Thatcher) and its chief designers (e.g. Mr Jacques Delors) had argued, or at least intimated, that the euro was only a first, tentative step toward a fully-fledged European Federation. If so, why has the Euro Crisis (which surely strengthened the arguments in favour of federation) not strengthened the federalists’ hand? Of those who were, supposedly, waiting to pounce upon any opportunity to create a United States of Europe? In this talk, we shall seek answers in the history of the European Economic Community, in the manner that the latter was destabilised by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, in the economic and political forces spearheading monetary union since 1971, and in the context of America’s pivotal role in putting, and keeping, Europe together from 1944 to 2008.
