Economic and monetary integration: Theory, practice and experience in the EU periphery
Economic and monetary integration: Theory, practice and experience in the EU periphery

Author(s): JOSÉ CASTRO CALDAS
Subject(s): Politics, Economy, EU-Approach / EU-Accession / EU-Development, Financial Markets
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: economic integration; political integration; Hayek; Myrdal; Portugal
Summary/Abstract: During and immediately after World War II, economic integration was conceived by both (neo)liberals and social democrats as the only available antidote to a repetition of such a catastrophe. For neoliberals, market-enhancing economic integration was conceived as the appropriate context for the flourishing of the liberal project. For social democrats, on the other hand, market-embedding integration was viewed as a precondition not only for peace but for development. The chapter traces the intellectual origins and rationale of both perspectives. The European Economic Community emerged out of a compromise of those contrasting views on economic integration, and has evolved through time, especially since the inception of the European Monetary Union (EMU), into an entity that very much materializes the (neo)liberal expectations and the social-democratic fears. This chapter assesses that evolution, in general. It finally considers, in particular, the experience and prospects of being in the EU and the EMU of a peripheral country: Portugal.

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