Richard T. Griffiths – författare

This authoritative volume traces the creation and development of the EEC as an institution and assesses its impact on the economic development of Europe and the policy areas under its control.The book includes a thorough discussion of the background and origins of the European Economic Community. In the early years of post-war Europe, the continuous search for a multilateral commercial agreement resulted in various plans for European commercial cooperation. These schemes were proposed less in a desire for European integration and supranational institutions, than in response to real economic problems and were the precursors to the formation of the EEC.The next section investigates the process of creating the EEC including the road to integration of the major founding members, and the attitude of the United States to European integration.Finally, it discusses the economic development of the EEC since 1957. It explores major themes including the impact of the Community on trade and agriculture and on competition and financial policy, as well as the effects of its own enlargement. The study ends with the steps towards closer union embodied in the Treaty of Maastricht, which signalled the transformation of the European Economic Community into the European Union.

This book traces the emergence of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) from 1955 to 1963 amid the broader reshaping of the institutional architecture of post-war Europe. It considers the ill-fated Free Trade Area (FTA) proposal, the subsequent creation of EFTA, and the resulting division of Western Europe into two distinct trading blocs. At its core, the book provides an international history of a formative moment of post-war and European integration history, and explores the intense technical discussions among European states as they grappled with the prospect of deeper economic and political unity. It thus provides the first detailed analysis combining the FTA and EFTA negotiations, considering both state and non-state actors. Drawing on archives from Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US, as well as the records of the OEEC and EFTA, it examines the decision-making processes of those intimately involved as well as the institutional settings within which they were forced to reconcile their positions. At a key moment of contemporary European friction, the book offers a dialogue between the past and those trying to make sense of events that continue to shape Europe today.

This book traces the emergence of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) from 1955 to 1963 amid the broader reshaping of the institutional architecture of post-war Europe. It considers the ill-fated Free Trade Area (FTA) proposal, the subsequent creation of EFTA, and the resulting division of Western Europe into two distinct trading blocs. At its core, the book provides an international history of a formative moment of post-war and European integration history, and explores the intense technical discussions among European states as they grappled with the prospect of deeper economic and political unity. It thus provides the first detailed analysis combining the FTA and EFTA negotiations, considering both state and non-state actors. Drawing on archives from Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US, as well as the records of the OEEC and EFTA, it examines the decision-making processes of those intimately involved as well as the institutional settings within which they were forced to reconcile their positions. At a key moment of contemporary European friction, the book offers a dialogue between the past and those trying to make sense of events that continue to shape Europe today.

On 26 September 1936, deep in the night, the Dutch cabinet took the decision to cut the guilder's link with gold and to devalue its currency. It was the last of the increasingly isolated and beleaguered 'gold bloc' countries to do so, having outlasted Switzerland by less than a day; the last country in Europe in which holders of a currency could exchange it for gold at the rate which had prevailed before the First World War; the last country to leave the gold standard. The reason why the 'Gold Bloc', which in September 1936 comprised only France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, should have hung on so long is something of a puzzle to historians since it has become virtually axiomatic that their recoveries would have begun sooner and proceded more strongly had they cut the link with gold and devalued their currencies much earlier. The fact that the decision not to do so has been seen as perverse, combined with the fact that in order to cope with the consequences of that decision governments chose to adopt deflationary policies to 'correct' the economy, has led historians for a long time to dismiss a whole generation of politicians and their' advisors' as stubborn, conservative and short-sighted. The Keynesian revolution and the long post-war economic boom had consigned them and their ilk to the dustbin of history for ever.