A History of European Monetary Integration

Abstract

At the outset of the European integration process, in the second half of the 20th century, it had not been decided whether the Member States should or should not eventually have a single currency. Though it was not written into the Treaty of Rome, it may have been in the back of the minds of the founding fathers of ‘the European Community’.³⁰ An often-quoted phrase of Jacques Rueff rightly stresses the symbolic importance attributed to money for the success of the integration process: ‘L’Europe se fera par la monnaie ou elle ne se fera pas’.