This book- which features a foreword by Jean-Claude Juncker and Preface by Professor Harold James- examines the European vocation and achievements of Pierre Werner (1913–2002), former Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, unanimously recognized as one of the architects of Economic and Monetary Union. The author makes extensive use of Pierre Werner’s previously unpublished archives belonging to the Werner family, opened for the first time for research purposes. The book analyses the Werner Report, negotiations within the Werner Committee, the emergence of the Committee’s views on EMU, their political commitment to a European currency, the similarities and differences between their ideas, their personal networks, the influence of the states they represented, their theoretical and methodological input and their contribution to the political consensus. Chapters shed new light on various aspects of the European integration process and also on the role of Luxembourg and its European policy. In addition, the author has carried out a series of original interviews with Luxembourg and European figures who share their memories and thoughts concerning Pierre Werner, his achievements and his views on the European integration process, and also other topics such as Economic and Monetary Union and Luxembourg‘s European policy. This book will be of interest and value to researchers, EU policy makers and students in the fields of political economy, political science, economic history and history of economic thought.

The introduction of the euro was an important event for the world economy and the international political system. For the first time in history, a substantial group of European countries-eleven of the fifteen members of the European Union including three members of the G-7-have voluntarily agreed to replace their national currencies with a single currency. The euro area has already become established as the second largest currency area in the world and will therefore become a major player in the international monetary system. The creation of the euro poses a number of interesting questions. Will the euro be a strong or a weak currency? Will the euro challenge the leading position hitherto held by the United States dollar and would sharing of the burdens and advantages of reserve currency status improve or worsen the stability of the international monetary system? How will the euro affect US relations with Europe? Does the formation of the euro intensify European integration in other fields? Is a bi-polar international monetary system viable? These and other issues motivated the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies and the Pierre Werner Foundation to organize an international conference in Luxembourg on December 3-4, 1998, on the eve of the birth of the euro. At the outset we were aware that the issue of the euro went far beyond pure economics. Money, after all, is too important a subject to be left to economists.

This text reflects on both past achievements and on the fundamental issues facing further European monetary integration. It includes a copy of the Werner Plan, extracts from the German constitutional court on the ratification of Maastrich and contributions from political figures.

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.

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.

Through the lens of multi- and interdisciplinarity, this book highlights the potential of progress in cloud computing technologies, metaverse development, and digital transformation in charting a path to economic and social recovery, governance process and societal evolution enabling to tackle the global polycrises triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The book is an outcome of the 5th International Conference on Economics and Social Sciences, ICESS 2022, Bucharest, Romania.

This text offers a multidisciplinary overview of theories of, and academic approaches to, European integration. The authors include four political scientists, an economist, a historian and a legal scholar. They examine critically the theories of European integration, as well as related theoretical and empirical works in political science, sociology and economics.