A Tale of Two Treatises: the Werner and Delors Reports and the Birth of the Euro

In the process towards European economic and monetary union, two reports played crucial roles. The 1970 Werner Report argued for both a supranational monetary pillar and a supranational economic pillar, while the 1989 Delors Report focused on the monetary pillar, and there was scepticism about discretionary fiscal policy. A background paper to the Delors Report, ‘The Werner Report Revisited’, identified four weaknesses of the Werner Report: absence of internal momentum, institutional ambiguities, insufficient constraints on national policies and an inappropriate policy conception – issues that remain very much on the European Union agenda today.