What’s the price of a currency in the political market? The creation of the Euro was the most fateful step ever made in the great experiment of European integration. In the third episode of the series, Luke Cooper looks at how the events of 1989 hastened forward the ‘project of Europe’. The European Union would be shaped by the conflicting ideas of two of Europe’s most important leaders and personalities, François Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher. But rather than the start of a process of political unity, Maastricht is, Cooper argues, best seen as a defeat for the once popular idea of a fully sovereign, and federally united, European project.
Dr Luke Cooper is an associate researcher and consultant at LSE IDEAS, the foreign policy think tank of the London School of Economics. He was previously a visiting fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences (IWM), Europe’s Futures programme (2018 – 2019). His book, Authoritarian Contagion, will be published by Bristol University Press in June 2021. He is the co-founder of Another Europe Is Possible and co-host of the Another Europe podcast.
Between Dream and Tragedy is hosted by the Europe’s Futures programme at the IWM and was supported by the ERSTE Foundation and the European Cultural Foundation.