Abstract
This chapter zooms in on the best-known achievement of the Jenkins presidency, namely the launch of the European Monetary System (EMS). It explains why Jenkins felt he urgently needed a big new policy priority by the summer of 1977, why he chose monetary integration, and how he set about winning support for this cause. The difficulties he faced included internal opposition from Ortoli and major divisions amongst the member states. But the chapter argues that Jenkins’ advocacy played a key role in persuading Schmidt and Giscard to adopt the objective of greater monetary integration as their own. Jenkins’ relatively brief period as standard bearer for monetary integration deserves to be seen as amongst the greatest successes of his years in Brussels.
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- 1.
John Campbell, Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life (London: Jonathan Cape, 2014).
- 2.
East Hendred papers, unedited version of the diary, entry for 16 July. The published version leaves out the day entirely.
- 3.
‘Down but not out in Brussels’, The Economist, 16 July 1977.
- 4.
Tickell Papers (TO), All Souls College, Oxford, File 7, ‘Float, October 1977 to March 1978’, Tickell to Jenkins, ‘Dr Ruggiero’, 25 November 1977.
- 5.
Beetham’s interview with the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, available at https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Beetham.pdf
- 6.
The phrase was used when reporting to the foreign ministers of the Nine about the special Commission meeting at La Roche-en-Ardenne, discussed below. Emile Noël papers (EN), EN-130, Speaking note for President, Meeting of Commissioners at La Roche-en-Ardenne 17/18 September 1977.
- 7.
Roy Jenkins, European Diary, 1977–1981 (London: Collins, 1989), 151–2.
- 8.
TP, File 16, ‘Meetings and Conversations, 1976–1977’, record of a conversation between the President of the European Commission and the French Prime Minister at the Hôtel Matignon, Paris, 19 November 1977.
- 9.
UKNA, PREM 16 1627, record of a call by the President of the European Commission, Mr Roy Jenkins, on the Prime Minister at Number 10 Downing Street, London, on Friday, 25 November 1977 at 10.00.
- 10.
Campbell, Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life.
- 11.
Stephen Wall, The Official History of Britain and the European Community, vol. 2: From Rejection to Referendum, 1963–1975 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 348.
- 12.
The Guardian, 17 March and 27 May 1973.
- 13.
The Guardian, 21 May 1973.
- 14.
An annex to the Jenkins/Emerson paper prepared for the La Roche en Ardenne meeting reviewed the known positions of the member states and predicted that only the British—and the German Bundesbank—were likely to be strongly hostile. European Commission Archives (ECA), SEC (77) 3125/2, 16 September 1977.
- 15.
European Commission, Report of the Study Group on the Role of Public Finance in European Integration, vol. 1 (Brussels: European Commission, 1977). When I interviewed Emerson he placed great emphasis on the formative importance of this experience in terms of his own views of EMU. Interview with Michael Emerson, 10 July 2013.
- 16.
In the course of his first nine months as Commission president, Jenkins made ‘official visits’ to all nine member states, usually meeting the head of state, the head of government, and often representatives of other leading political parties. He thus met the Queen and Margaret Thatcher during this July visit as well as Callaghan.
- 17.
UKNA, PREM 16 1627, Fergusson to Cartledge, 20 July 1977.
- 18.
Ibid., note of a meeting between the Prime Minister and the Rt Hon Roy Jenkins, President of the EEC Commission, at Number 10 Downing Street, London, on 21 July at 19.30.
- 19.
TP, File 16, ‘Records of Meetings and Conversations, September 1976 to 1977’, record of a meeting at East Hendred, 2 August 1977.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Emile Noël papers, EN-130, SEC (77) 3125, ‘Eléments de réflexion sur l’union économique et monétaire’, 15 September 1977.
- 23.
ECHA, SEC (77) 3125/2, ‘The Prospect of Monetary Union’, 16 September 1977.
- 24.
Highlights a significance convergence and great scope for synthesis between the points of view of M. Ortoli and President Jenkins.
- 25.
ECHA, COM (77) PV 442, 2e partie (séance du 18 septembre 1977). Emerson referred laughingly to this particular phrase when I interviewed him. Interview with Michael Emerson, 10 July 2013.
- 26.
Jenkins, European Diary, 1977–1981, 143.
- 27.
ECA, COM (77) PV 442, 2e partie (séance du 18 septembre 1977).
- 28.
Interview with Michael Emerson, 10 July 2013.
- 29.
See, for example, The Guardian, 20 October 1977.
- 30.
See The Guardian, 18 November 1977, and The Economist, 26 November 1977.
- 31.
JP, East Hendred, unedited version of the European Diary, entry for Monday, 14 November 1977.
- 32.
That this was fairly typical of Ortoli’s approach is confirmed by Laurent Warlouzet, ‘François-Xavier Ortoli (1973–1977): “drifting with the Tide”’, in An Impossible Job? The Presidents of the European Commission, 1958–2014, ed. Jan Van der Harst and Gerrit Voerman (London: John Harper, 2015).
- 33.
The full text of the lecture is available at http://aei.pitt.edu/4404/
- 34.
Jenkins, Jean Monnet lecture, Florence, 27 October 1977.
- 35.
Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, A Europe Made of Money: The Emergence of the European Monetary System (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 160.
- 36.
Jenkins, Jean Monnet lecture, Florence, 27 October 1977.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
TP, File 16, ‘Meetings and Conversations, September 1976 to 1977’, meeting of President Jenkins with Prime Minister Andreotti, 28 October 1977, in Rome.
- 39.
Ibid., summary record of a conversation between the President of the European Commission and the Federal Chancellor over lunch in the Chancellor’s Office, Bonn, 10 November 1977.
- 40.
Ibid., record of a conversation between the President of the European Commission and the French Prime Minister at the Hôtel Matignon, Paris, 19 November 1977.
- 41.
Ibid., record of a conversation between the President of the European Commission and the British Prime Minister, Number 10 Downing Street, London, 25 November 1977. The British minutes of the same talk are in UKNA, PREM 16 1627.
- 42.
The statement is available electronically at http://aei.pitt.edu/11005/
- 43.
Jenkins statement to the Brussels Council, 5 December 1977.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
A rather messy British record of discussions at this Council is available in UKNA, PREM 16/1640. A shorter French version is in Archives Nationales, AG/5(3)/912, subfolder: ‘Conseilleur diplomatique. Conseil européen de Bruxelles (5–6 décembre 1977)’.
- 47.
Jenkins, European Diary, 1977–1981, 183.
- 48.
See TP, File 17, ‘Meetings and Conversations 1978 to March 1979’, records of the meetings with Jørgensen (17 February 1978), with Giscard (21 February 1978), and with Lynch (23 February 1978). The text of the Bonn speech is available at http://aei.pitt.edu/10986/
- 49.
TP, File 17, ‘Meetings and Conversations 1978 to March 1979’, record of a conversation between the President of the European Commission and the Federal Chancellor, Bonn, Tuesday, 28 February 1978
- 50.
Jenkins, European Diary, 1977–1981, 225–226.
- 51.
The two fullest studies of the negotiations that would lead to the EMS are Peter Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System: A Case Study of the Politics of the European Community (London: Butterworths, 1982); and Mourlon-Druol, A Europe Made of Money.
- 52.
Jürgen Elvert, ‘Die Europapolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der Zeit der Kanzlerschaft Helmut Schmidts (1974–1982)’, in Quelles architectures pour quelle Europe?, ed. Sylvain Schirmann (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011), 205–27.
- 53.
Klaus Wiegrefe, Das Zerwürfnis: Helmut Schmidt, Jimmy Carter und die Krise der Deutsch-Amerikanische Beziehungen (Berlin: Propyläen, 2005).
- 54.
TP, File 16, ‘Meetings and Conversations, September 1976 to 1977’, summary record of a conversation between the President of the European Commission and the Federal Chancellor over lunch in the Chancellor’s Office, Bonn, 10 November 1977.
- 55.
Haig Simonian, The Privileged Partnership: Franco-German Relations in the European Community, 1969–1984 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
- 56.
Email exchange with Jürgen Elvert, 16 February 2014.
- 57.
See Chap. 2.
- 58.
TP, File 15, ‘European Councils’, ‘Memorandum for the European Council, Copenhagen 7/8 April, 1978’, 3 April 1978.
- 59.
Jenkins, European Diary, 1977–1981, 292–294.
- 60.
TP, File 19, ‘EMU/EMS’, multiple documents.
- 61.
See TP, File 17, ‘Meetings and Conversations 1978 to March 1979’, record of a [phone] conversation between the President of the European Commission and the Federal Chancellor, Brussels, 20 April 1978; ibid., record of a call by the President of the European Commission on the President of the French Republic, Paris, Thursday, 22 June 1978.
- 62.
Ibid., record of a call by the President of the European Commission on the British Prime Minister, Number 10 Downing Street, London, 3 July 1978.
- 63.
Jenkins, European Diary, 1977–1981, 247–8.
- 64.
Ibid., 288.
- 65.
TP, File 8, ‘Float, March–August 1978’, Tickell to Jenkins, 23 May 1978.
- 66.
Ludlow, The Making of the European Monetary System; Mourlon-Druol, A Europe Made of Money.
- 67.
Mourlon-Druol, A Europe Made of Money, 160.
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Ludlow, N.P. (2016). Finding a Sense of Direction: Jenkins and the Launch of the European Monetary System. In: Roy Jenkins and the European Commission Presidency, 1976 –1980. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51530-8_5
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