French Social Democracy and the EMU

The role of French social democracy in the creation of Economic and Monetary Union seems straightforward. EMU, which as an idea had existed in the EU's repertory since the Werner Report in the 1970s, was "relaunched" in 1986 under a French social democratic president, François Mitterrand, then hammered into a concrete proposal by a French social democratic president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors. EMU was then ably shepherded through Maastricht by both with the aid of Helmut Kohl. Simultaneously, French social democratic governments pursued a set of domestic policies designed to provide the macroeconomic policy support that EMU needed, in particular convergence with the Germans. Furthermore, EMU could easily be fitted into the grand European strategies Mitterrand designed earlier in the 1980s, after the French experiment with "social democracy in one country" had failed. However, as we will se in this article, appearances may be delusive; differentiating between Mitterand qua president and PS qua party may be a good place to start.