A Europe made of money by Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol

Author:Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol [Mourlon-Druol, Emmanuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, General, Political Science, Political Economy, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780801465932
Google: v_2tDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2012-07-11T01:10:40+00:00

Outlining a Brand-New Scheme? The Work of the Schulmann-Clappier-Couzens Group

The work of the ad hoc group composed of Horst Schulmann, Bernard Clappier, and Kenneth Couzens certainly remains one of the most unclear parts of the EMS story. Information about when and where they met and what was said by the “Gang of Three,” as Ludlow calls them, remains uncertain.68 According to the British archival record, the Group of Three met three times (on 12 May at the Banque de France in Paris; on 26 May in Washington; and again in Paris on 14June). Couzens and Schulmann (no one else was present) met separately a first time after the Copenhagen summit on 20 April, while Clappier and Schulmann met a last time in Hamburg, together with Giscard and Schmidt, but without Couzens, just before the issuing of the Schulmann/Clappier draft.69 Since a study of their meetings is absent from the literature, in this section I will analyze their work through a strict chronological reconstruction. The idea that guided their work from the very beginning was to eventually provide a paper that would be “a semi-secret Franco-German statement of methods and objectives.”70

The first Schulmann-Couzens meeting took place a few days before another important meeting between Schmidt and Callaghan, on 23 April. The reasons for such a separate meeting, in the absence of Clappier, are slightly obscure. A possible answer lies in the fact that the German side was well aware that the British government would be harder to convince than the French. This could explain why Schulmann did not regard the need for a proper trilateral meeting as urgent. It was recorded that at the end of the meeting he simply said that he envisaged a joint meeting with Clappier would be necessary “at some stage.”71

Since there was still no paper setting out Schmidt’s plan in more detail, this meeting of Couzens and Schulmann was only about “philosophy, not specifics” of monetary cooperation: “What seemed to be in his [Schulmann’s] mind (and perhaps therefore in the mind of Herr Schmidt) was to seek a philosophical (if not emotional) commitment to a broad concept of linked European currencies and a Europe more self-reliant in monetary matters.”72 Apart from a timid positive remark by Schulmann, who stressed that the three main European countries had moved closer economically in 1976–1977, the rest of this first exchange of views was hardly positive, particularly on the British side. Couzens first openly doubted the rationale behind Schmidt’s Europe-centered, monetary-exclusive endeavor.73 He then discussed how difficult it would be for the British government to take a new step in European integration during a potential election year. Callaghan made a similar point on the afternoon of that same day.74 If both had domestic political considerations in mind, it must also be noted that, in more general terms, it could be economically risky to enter a near-fixed exchange rate system of the EMS type in an electoral period, since this could well nurture speculation and currency pressure. It was, in a

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