Affiliation:
1. History, Wellesley College
Abstract
Abstract
The chapter explores Ordoliberal ideas of federalism using the example of European integration. Through the cases of European competition policy, European Monetary Union and secessionism, it proposes the categories of Ordoliberal assessments, meaning the opinions of individual Ordoliberals vis-à-vis the evolution of European integration; Ordoliberal achievements, meaning the agency of Ordoliberals in shaping European institutions; and Ordoliberal affinities, meaning the proximity of institutions to putative Ordoliberal principles. Following specific Ordoliberals from the 1930s to the 2020s, this chapter shows that the Ordoliberal attitude to the federal project of Europe changed over time, from conditional approval in the 1950s and 1960s, especially related to the possibilities of competition law, to a growing scepticism in the 1990s around the shape taken by the European Monetary Union, to a reorientation in the 2000s from the central constitutional rules creation to the possibility of exit and even secession.