Can We Offer Anything More or Nothing Better? Euro and European Monetary Policy after the Adoption of the Single Currency

The chapter analyses the evolution of the European Monetary System from 1979 (when the EMS started) to the beginning of the 2008 world economic crisis. The aim is, first and foremost, to highlight the participating countries’ commitment to the Euro as the currency of the Euro-Area countries (accepted by some but not by all of the European Union members); and, secondly, to undergo a rigorous analysis of the solution chosen by the European leadership as the only one available at the time: certainly, without serious alternatives in 1979 but aged prematurely in the following years. The analysis will show how the Community members accepted a policy at the end of the 1980s (when the Berlin Wall fell) that was consistent with the general situation of the time; but also it will investigate the speed with which the project became obsolete after 1989, when the international system began to change rapidly with the European leadership’s inability to conceive any new and more ‘revolutionary’ solution to overcome the Union’s standstill

Il contributo analizza la politica comunitaria dal 1979 in avanti e la sua (in)capacità a reagire ai cambiamenti avvenuti in ambito internazionale da quel momento in avanti.