Paper Titles & Abstracts

When Robert Marjolin became vice-president of the EEC Commission (1958-1967), he was one of Europe's most distinguished economists. In 1958 he could already look back on a successful career as an academic, politician and international civil servant who was well networked on both sides of the Atlantic. In the post-war period Marjolin had invested himself in the economic reconstruction of France and Europe and had been instrumental in the founding of the OEEC, becoming its first Secretary-General in 1948. During his term as the Commission's vice-president, he was in charge of the economic and monetary affairs portfolio and instrumental in setting up the Medium-term Economic Policy Committee and the Committee of Governors of the Central Banks in 1964 to improve central bank and economic policy cooperation. Marjolin advocated the adoption of Community-wide medium-term economic aims, based on ideas on economic planning, or 'programmation', which he had developed first as an academic in the 1930s and later working at the Monnet Plan. After retiring from the Commission in 1967, Marjolin remained active in European monetary affairs. An advocate of the Werner Plan for Economic and Monetary Union, in the mid-1970s Marjolin chaired an expert group authoring the Report on European monetary co-operation, which candidly spelled out the obstacles to the realisation of EMU. Given this varied and long career, this paper aims to trace Marjolin's contribution to European monetary integration, which arguably make him one of the 'founding fathers' of the Euro.