Governing the Euro-zone

Abstract

Chapter 9 examines the development of SPD policy on Economic and Monetary Union as the party moved along the opposition–government axis, when it became a government in waiting in the late 1990s and entered office in 1998 to be faced by the governance of the Euro-zone after the establishment of Monetary Union on 1 January 1999. The chapter will, first, chart the development of a more cohesive European policy in the mid-to-late 1990s as the party moved along the ‘road to government’ with reference to the policy confusion described in the previous chapter. Here, SPD European policy sought to establish issue-linkage between Economic and Monetary Union and European social and employment policy during the 1996–97 IGC leading up to the Amsterdam Treaty (1997). The party also sought to press the Federal Government on the maintenance of hard convergence criteria for the transition to Stage III of Monetary Union. Both of these policies were bound to the domestic aims of the party in attacking the Kohl Government on its performance in economic and social policy in Germany as the SPD developed its policy for government in the run-up to the 1998 federal elections.