And if Britons believe that EMU membership will lead to political integration with the Continent, they are unlikely to join. The final player is the European Central Bank. The real question, however, is how much the ECB's governors will differ from Alan Greenspan, whose deliberate mumbles sound orthodox whereas his adept actions show far more flexibility. The current ECB president, Wim Duisenberg, of the Netherlands, sounds quite conservative, but he did lower interest rates once he was rid of Lafontaine. The agreement whereby Duisenberg became president calls for his replacement halfway through the first presidential term by Jean-Claude Trichet, who is French and thus perhaps flexible.
New policies are unlikely in the current situation.
Should the situation deteriorate in a cyclical downturn, France is ready to adapt, and the ECB's actions may be more flexible than its pronouncements. Success, on the other hand, will both require and engender further integration. Coordinated decision-making on deficits would be a major step in integration. But whatever combination of old American and new European ideas set the model, the success of the EMU would lead toward a Europe that can be defined at least as loosely confederal if not more tightly federal. Whether that is desirable is up to Europeans to say.