Promoting the ECU

The first nine years of the EMS, the period 1979–87, consisted of a series of currency crises forcing exchange rate realignments. They reflected fundamental differences in view and in interests regarding the sharing of the burden of adjustment between surplus and deficit countries, which resulted from different priorities in domestic policies. Earlier, these differences had compelled France to leave the snake twice. When the snake was replaced by the EMS, France tried to ensure that the ECU would play a central role in the new system, both in rendering the burden sharing more ‘symmetrical’ and in presenting the EMS as more ‘European’ and French-inspired, and thus less of a German mark zone. As was described in chapter 7, these efforts failed in the end due to opposition by the Bundesbank, supported by the Nederlandsche Bank. The EMS therefore started with the main controversies unresolved. In the years that followed, France—supported by a number of other countries as well as by the European Commission—tried to achieve its objective of a more ‘symmetrical’ burden sharing by proposing to gradually expand the role of the ECU. To this end, periodic—preferably annual—‘packages’ of technical proposals were to be introduced, presented as technical improvements that would also have the political advantage of maintaining the momentum of integration.