Much of the criticism levelled against European policymakers since the eurocrisis has centred around the claim that the adoption of a common currency was an essentially political project which courted disaster by decoupling monetary from political integration. According to what has become a popular narrative, the European leadership chose political grandstanding and symbolism over pragmatism in recklessly pushing forward with a fatally deficient scheme of monetary union. Little wonder, then, that the hubris of political fiat found its nemesis in the hard facts of economics.

I shall argue that this narrative is in many ways incomplete as it leaves out entirely the intellectual background to the steps that have furthered the development of the EU. From the 1950s, the integration process has been underpinned, or at least accompanied and justified, by what might be called the theory of ‘self-fulfilling Europe’: the idea that economic integration, once set in motion, can remove political resistance to European unification by creating factual interdependence and a consciousness of solidarity.