Raymond Barre: Modernising France through European Monetary Cooperation

The true significance of Barre as an architect of European Economic and Monetary Union should be seen in terms of his economic convictions. They led him - far earlier than most of his compatriots, and against many detractors within French political, policy making and academic circles — to support the three main macro-economic stepping stones to EMU: macro-economic convergence based on low inflation; exchange-rate targeting (through an external exchange-rate regime) to reinforce domestic efforts to bring down inflation; and capital liberalization. As European Commissioner, and then as French prime minister from 1976 to 1981 with a concurrent stint as Finance Minister from 1976-1978, Barre maintained his consistent support for these three policy goals, although without the telos of a single currency by way of official justification. Prior to the Delors Report, Barre never publicly stated his support for the creation of a single European currency emitted by a European central bank. Barre repeatedly claimed that he was a European by conviction, but his Europeanism remained one in which Member States retained control. Barre was no fan of supra-nationalism. Domestic economic concerns and the competitiveness of the French economy were always his priorities.