Making and breaking the rules: French policy on EU ‘gouvernement économique’

Abstract

Abstract French policy-makers have been caught in a dilemma with regard to the construction of the economic governance dimension of economic and monetary union (EMU) between two strong but contradictory preferences: on the one hand, the supranational consequences of an interventionist approach to macroeconomic policy and, on the other hand, a Gaullist reflex to retain sovereignty as much as possible and to insist upon intergovernmentalism in EU-level macroeconomic policy-making. From the late 1980s to the present day, French governments have promoted the construction of economic governance in ways which can be seen in terms of these contradictory preferences and they have consistently maintained a communicative discourse that challenged the supremacy of the Treaty-based ‘price stability’ goals of economic governance. The development of economic governance has involved less ‘top-down’ Europeanization and ‘transformation’ of French policy than ‘bottom-up’ Europeanization, ‘accommodation’ and ‘absorption’.