The Maastricht Monetary Policy: A Danger for Europe

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The monetary policy decisions of Maastricht: A Danger for Europe is the title of a Euro- critical manifesto published on June 11, 1992 by German economists . They opposed the timing for the introduction of a European Economic and Monetary Union , which had recently been laid down in the Maastricht Treaty by the European heads of state and government.

The initiators Renate Ohr , at the time professor of foreign trade at the University of Hohenheim , and Wolf Schäfer , then professor of economics at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg , warned with this manifesto against what they saw as a hasty and incorrect introduction of a common European currency. The manifesto was signed by 62 German professors of economics .

The manifesto was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung under the title The EC monetary union leads to the ultimate test .

content

The manifesto does not reject the idea of ​​a monetary union in principle, but the measures provided for in the Maastricht Treaty to achieve the goal are seen as inadequate or wrong. First of all, it should be noted that a monetary union requires a permanent alignment of economic structures. In order to ensure this, a review is therefore also necessary over a certain period of time and not a review on an arbitrarily set date . The EU convergence criteria agreed for this purpose , such as the relative price level stability, are also inadequate, and insistence on their consistent compliance is questionable for political reasons. Is predicted that the European Central Bank their main goal, the price stability , will not prevail, due to different national interests; there is no European consensus that price stability is a priority. The professors also warn of the threat of unemployment and “high transfer payments in the sense of a ' financial equalization '”, since the economically weaker countries cannot cope with the new competitive pressure. Basically, an economically, socially and politically united Europe should be the prerequisite (and not the goal) of a common currency, otherwise strong economic tensions would arise. These could even "lead to a political ordeal [...] and thus endanger the goal of integration ".

List of signatories

The signatories were professors of economics:

reception

The professors' intervention sparked lively discussions, but was politically unsuccessful, as was a second manifesto from among the signatories, with the same thrust under the title The euro is coming too early . This was published in the FAZ in February 1998 - shortly before the planned implementation of economic and monetary union - and signed by 155 professors.

The line of politics, economy and banking was met by a different call in August 1997, written by the economists Peter Bofinger , Claus Köhler , Lutz Hoffmann and Gerold Krause-Junk and signed by 58 university professors. They called for the monetary union to start on time.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Philip Plickert : What the euro critics warned about early on , FAZ.NET , February 7, 2017; accessed July 12, 2020.
  2. ^ The monetary policy decisions of Maastricht: A Danger for Europe (PDF), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 11, 1992. Full text of the document, Renate Ohr website at the University of Göttingen ; accessed July 12, 2020.
  3. ^ List of signatories after online reproduction of the manifesto in the economic blog Wirtschaftliche Freiheit , blog entry from December 11, 2016; accessed July 12, 2020.
  4. ↑ Michael Rasch : Plea for a reduced euro zone , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 25, 2017 (review after 25 years); accessed July 12, 2020.
  5. ↑ The euro arrives too early (PDF), in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 9, 1998. Full text of the document, Renate Ohr website at the University of Göttingen ; accessed July 12, 2020.
  6. ↑ Thomas Hanke: 155 professors call for the postponement of monetary union , in: Die Zeit 8/1998, February 12, 1998; Retrieved July 12, 1998.
  7. ^ Simone Weske: European politics in contradiction . The gap between rulers and ruled. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-17794-6 , p. 164. ( limited preview at Google Books )
  8. ↑ Georg Kreis : Justice for Europe . A criticism of the EU criticism. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2017, ISBN 978-3-7965-3743-1 , p. 164. ( limited preview on Google Books )