European Responses to Globalization and Financial Market Integration: Perceptions of Economic and Monetary Union in Britain, France and Germany

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Summary: Fascinating account of EU economics
Review: Verdun aims to discover why, given that EMU greatly reduced national sovereignty, there was so little public discussion of its costs and benefits. As she noted of EMU, "This transfer of national sovereignty can arguably be considered to be one of the most far-reaching formal transfers of sovereignty to the European level that the European Community (EC) members have witnessed to date." She studied the ways that central bankers, Ministries of Finance, employers' organisations and trade union leaderships in Britain, France and Germany all perceived EMU. The bankers, Ministries and employers' organisations agreed that EMU would strengthen the market mechanism in Europe. They also agreed that it would assist their efforts to create a single European state. As Verdun observed, "EMU will eventually necessitate more integration of economic, fiscal, social and labour policies." Some quarters of the TUC hoped that associating themselves with the EU's decision-making process would increase their power. But the more the TUC claimed to set the EU agenda on social and employment issues, the more it linked itself to the EU's disastrous impact on Britain's industry and welfare. Some trade union leaders thought that the EU would restore the influence over economic policy-making that they had lost at national level. But cosying up to the employer, whether European or British, weakens our unions, not strengthens us. Some thought that possible gains from the Social Charter would justify the certain losses from labour market flexibility. But who talks about the Social Charter today? Did it save any of the 96,000 manufacturing jobs destroyed in Britain last year? So why was there so little public discussion of EMU's costs and benefits? Verdun does not finally explain, but one suspects that it was because its benefits would accrue only to the ruling classes of Britain, France and Germany, while the public, the vast majority of us who have to work for a living, would suffer all the costs.