Architects of the Euro: Intellectuals in the Making of European Monetary Union

Who were key figures in the making of European monetary union? Which ideas did they contribute to ensuring that monetary union would be sustainable? How prescient were they in identifying the necessary and sufficient foundations of a sustainable monetary union?

This book provides the first systematic historical examination of key architects of European monetary union in the period before its launch in 1999. Using original archival and interview research, it investigates the intellectual and career backgrounds of these architects, their networking skills, and their own doubts and reservations about the way in which monetary union was being constructed. In the light of the later Euro Area, Architects of the Euro deals critically with not just their contribution to the making of European monetary union but also their legacy. The book brings together a distinguished group of scholars working on the history of Economic and Monetary Union.

Kenneth Dyson is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and Research Professor in European Political Studies at Cardiff University. His research interests encompass the European state, German policies and politics, comparative and international political economy, and the EU. His recent publication States, Debt, and Power: 'Saints' and 'Sinners' in European History and Integration (OUP, 2014) won the UACES Best Book Prize.

Ivo Maes is Senior Advisor at the Research Department of the National Bank of Belgium and a professor, Robert Triffin Chair, at the Universite Catholique de Louvain and at ICHEC Brussels Business School. His books include Economic Thought and the Making of European Monetary Union (Edward Elgar, 2002), Half a Century of European Financial Integration: From the Rome Treaty to the 21st Century (Mercatorfonds, 2007); and co authored Alexandre Lamfalussy, The Wise Man of the Euro: A Conversation with Christophe Lamfalussy, with Sabine Peters (LannooCampus, 2014).