Werner-Plan

The Werner Plan was submitted in 1970 by a commission of experts under the leadership of the then Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Pierre Werner, which had been set on the summit of The Hague in 1969. He saw before, set up a monetary union by 1980 in the then European Community and introduce a single currency. However, the Werner Plan was well ahead of its time and failed. This was largely due to this as well, that with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system - by the monetary policy of Nixon and the oil crisis in 1971 - the international monetary system completely fell into upheaval. In a first stage of the Werner Plan ( January 1971 to December 1973 ) the coordination of economic policies and the monetary and credit policies should be reinforced. Furthermore, the liberalization of capital movements should be accelerated. In addition, preliminary measures to resolve structural and regional problems and harmonization of taxes were provided.

A core dispute broke out between economists and monetarists. The former saw before, first to coordinate the economic policies ( especially Germany and the Netherlands), the latter aimed at a monetary coordination (France, Belgium, Luxembourg ). The Werner Plan recommended a parallel action. On March 22, 1971, the Council agreed to the gradual realization of EMU ( Economic and Monetary Union). As mentioned, the whole project but failed due to the catastrophic conditions. Only a European exchange rate mechanism ( snake ) survived the crisis. At the end of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark were at the " currency bloc " that allowed fluctuations within narrow limits between the participating currencies only involved. The other EC countries were eliminated because the value of their currencies fell so quickly that they could not keep stable exchange rates. In 1979 they took with the European Monetary System (EMS) a third attempt to come to a close economic and monetary cooperation in the EC.