Achieving a Shared Consensus: the Delors Committee and the Relaunch of the EMU Process

The Madrid European Council of 26-27 June 1989, where the twelve heads of state of the EEC officially approved the Delors Report and formally launched the EMU process, marked the emergence of a new consensus towards European institutional innovations. This paper, based mainly on previously unseen documents from the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa personal archives held at the Historical Archives of the European Union, analyses the two-years path that brought to this result. In early 1988, a French and Italian challenge to the European monetary system in place, through the publication of two memorandums, launched an international debate alimented by both national and supranational actors that led to the creation of the Delors Committee in June 1988. Developed from September 1988 to April 1989, its activity made it possible for the EC members to identify and define the fundamental elements of a monetary union and to outline a three-stage path for its realisation.