a further reminder that, as in the past, Franco-German cooperation was the necessary condition for the unification of Western Europe. The impulse behind Franco-German moves in the Seventies was economic anxiety. The European economy was growing slowly if at all, inflation was endemic and the uncertainty resulting from the collapse of the Bretton Woods system meant that exchange rates were volatile and unpredictable. The Snake, the EMS and the écu were a sort of second-best—because regional rather than international—response to the problem, serially substituting
