Posted on 19 February 2016
On 28 and 29 January the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) hosted the workshop “Financial History of Europe”, eabh Oral History Project and the conversation “Eurovision? The Initial Period of Europe’s Monetary Union”. The event was jointly organised by the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre and eabh (the European Association for Banking and Financial History). It focused on the research on European financial history and on its role for the understanding of the current framework of political decision making in Europe.
The first half-day session “Financial History of Europe” drew the participants’ attention on how oral history projects could be integrated to financial archivists’ and researchers’ practice. Dieter Schlenker, Director of the HAEU, stated the major role oral history projects play in contemporary history and the Archives’ great interest in this field, highlighting that “the 600 interviews deposited at the HAEU tell quite a different story of Europe than what you would learn just from paper records.”
The session started with the intervention of Ronald Kroeze, VU University Amsterdam, who talked about his experience on oral history projects addressing issues such as the financial crisis. Then Robert Perks, Director of the National Life Stories project and lead curator of Oral History at the British Library, presented the oral history workflow and the process of archiving oral history materials. Susana Muñoz, Head of European Integration Studies at the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l'Europe (CVCE), shed light on the role ICT in the field of European studies and finally Pierre de Longuemar, former director of the BNP Paribas archives, talked about his experience as responsible of one of the earliest oral history projects in the financial area.
The series of presentations was followed by group work on how to develop oral history projects. The exercise was moderated by Michele Blagg (King's College) and Rob Perks, and focused on how to prepare interviews, interviewing techniques, legal and ethics questions.
On the second day, the conversation “Eurovision? The Initial Period of Europe’s Monetary Union” brought together financiers, politicians, lawyers and academics to discuss political decisions in the European financial sector taken 25 years ago when eabh was founded. The session was introduced by Manfred Pohl, founder of eabh, and Youssef Cassis, Professor of Economic History at the European University Institute in Florence.
A following discussion on the history, efforts, achievements and future role of the eabh brought together Manfred Pohl, Hugo Bänziger, Managing Partner at Lombard Odier and Chairman of eabh, Edwin Green, former archivist at the HSBC group, Brigitte Hatke-Beck, who worked on the foundation of eabh, Roger Nougaret, archivist for BNP Paribas, and Francesca Pino, responsible for the Intesa Sanpaolo Group Archives. The session was followed by Hugo Bänziger’s keynote speech 'The European Project within a Global Context'.
In the final discussion, Gunter Baer, Honorary Chairman at the Bank for International Settlements, Alfonso Iozzo, Vice-president of the Triffin International Foundation and Board member of the Centre for Studies on Federalism, Christian Noyer, Honorary Chairman at the Banque de France, Niels Thygesen, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University of Copenhagen, and Harold James, Princeton University, chairman of the AC of eabh spoke about the origins of the European Monetary Union. The session and the two-days event was closed by a short summary on the discussions by Prof. Harold James.
Photos of the event on the eabh Flickr album
Online exhibition Financial History of Europe on the HAEU's blog
Visit the eabh website