The politics of European credit policy

Organised by

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Jens van 't Klooster analyses the operational framework of European central banks from the early 1970s to the 2021 strategy review in his recent paper. Van 't Klooster argues that credit policy should be understood as a conventional and legitimate part of central banks’ core functions. Starting from ubiquitous practices in the early 1970s across the European Economic Community, he traces their demise in three steps: the 1980s marketisation of monetary policy, the Delors Committtee and the European Central Bank (ECB) mandate as included in the 1992 Maastricht treaty, and the ECB’s early operational practices in the mid-2000 in order to show how the ECB’s 2021 strategy returns credit policy to the heart of the Governing Council’s internal decision-making.