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We are still going along the history of European integration in the 70s decade. We saw the enlargement, the first evolution element, we saw the institutional strenghtening, the introduction of the European parliament elected by a direct universal suffrage, for instance, which will take important powers in the fields of powers of budget and then in the law-making field. We have to examine now the third evolution element, besides the market, new competences and new policies. In the meanwhile let’s repeat one more time that there are still many steps left before getting to the full accomplishment of the Only Market, we have to wait 1992 in order to have a real free circulation of goods, services, people and money; in order to have a real policy of the competition, of the taxation and of law-making reconciliation. But in the 70s a new aspect in the economic policy takes a great importance, and that’s the monetary policy. At the beginning of the 70s, on the 15th August 1971, the famous American President Nixon’s announcement, about the convertibility of American dollars into gold: the fixed changes system, introduced by Bretton Woods at the end of the WW2, finishes and we get the free fluctuations in the money market. It’s clear that the free fluctuation, especially in presence of great ups and downs, energetic crisis and so on, it’s a big obstacle to the development of a real Only market based on an economic policy shared by the member States. In a first moment we have partial attempts, the monetary snake in 1973-74, but in 1978 we come to a turning-point, with a strong initiative took by two European leaders, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, President of French Repuclic, and on the other hand Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor. They propose to the other countries to start a European monetary system, charachterized by a strong limitation in the changes fluctuation among European countries money. I had the privilege of being the Italian negotiator, as Treasury Minister, in costant relationship with these other countries of European monetary system. I had the pleasure as well, for instance, of hearing a brilliant speech that Helmut Schmidt made to Jimmy Carter, USA President, on the occasion of Bonn G7 in July 1978, about the reasons that drove and was driving Europe on a way of greater monetary integration. Carter asked Schmidt: “ You called me twice but I don’t have clear ideas yet, and American citizens fear you want to make a policy against the Dollar”. Schmidt reply with great an eloquence:”You see, there’s a big difference between you and us, we are very exposed in the international trade among European countries but we have fluctuating money, sometimes in a senseless way, and what kind of entrepreneur invest today, without knowing the rate of change he can sell his goods in another country. On the contrary You are lucky, you have Dollars everywhere, in New York, in New Orleans, in Los Angeles, in Vancouver”. I heard the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s voice saying:” I thought Vancouver was still in Canada...”. This happened in 1978. The European monetary system started, but the 70s are the years of the new policies as well. We already reminded that with the article 235, without modifying the Treaty, the Council can introduce new policies. Here the three most importane ones; one of them is the policy of research and of the technological development; environment policy and, finally, the policy for economic and social cohesion. This policies will be unified later by the Only Act. I finish by pointing out some timid attempts on the field of political co-operation in the 70s: the Davignon report in 1970. Times aren’t ripe yet, they will come later. We can foresee, in the 70s as well, the idea that European adventure is, we could say, irreversible and fundamental for Europe and that everybody is going along the great adventure which, as recently pointed out by the Constitution, makes it a preferential space in human hope.
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