France in the Euro-Zone: the management of paradoxical interests

Abstract

This chapter examines substantive reforms to, respectively, the French polity, politics, and policies in terms both of this domestic dialectic between conservative liberalism and interventionism and of Europeanization. EMU embodies a paradox for French policymakers. The project can be seen in terms of meeting long-standing French macroeconomic goals of achieving competitiveness through disinflation, the elimination of the German-centred EMS, and sheltering France from speculative pressures. Yet EMU also involves an institutional framework and rules that ostensibly decrease policymaking margin of manoeuvre.