How strong was the Bundesbank?: A Case Study in the Policy-Making of German and European Monetary Union. CEPS Working Document No. 172, September 2001

摘要

The orthodox view of the role of Germany’s central bank during the last decade of the previous century is one of a strategic defeat against the political forces that pushed for monetary union in Germany in 1990 and in the entire European Union less than two years later. Being overpowered in the first instance, commentators see the Bundesbank as weakened and doomed to fail in the big struggle over EMU. That view is wrong. It is based on false assumptions that have been created in the press and that have been uncritically received by an, at times, less-than-vigilant academic world. The chief misunderstanding was to assert outright opposition to both projects on behalf of the Bundesbank in the first place, thereby misrepresenting the competences, interests and role of a central bank even as strong and independent as the Bundesbank was. By attempting to reveal its real intentions and positions, the author wants to show that the ECB’s model actually achieved almost all of its aims in this critical period for the future of Europe’s monetary constitution, our present today.