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If your argument is that France is and has always considered itself central to the "European project", that is not debatable. If you are saying France = Germany, no difference, then that is debatable.
The major (i.e., policy relevant) macroeconomic strains of thought today, Aust(e)rianism, Keynesianism and Monetarism originated in Continental Europe, Britain and the US respectively. That should tell us something: Continental Europe is the home of harebrained "common sense" economics.
Yes, France had the Physiocrats, Italy has been big in Chartalism/Circuitism, there are Marxian economists all over Europe. I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS
A second point is that, if "sound money" goes way back, the precise project of a single currency in Europe dates practically speaking from the demise of Bretton Woods, and claims (at least the legend does) a U Chicago Canadian as its "father", Robert Mundell.
Mundell: OPTIMUM CURRENCY AREAS
It was with great regret that I felt compelled to distance myself on this basic policy issue from teachers and good friends like James Meade, Milton Friedman, Harry Johnson, Gottfried Haberler, Fritz Machlup, Lloyd Metzler and Arnold Harberger and others who supported flexible exchange rates. I found myself among such diverse company as Lord Robbins, Sir Roy Harrod, Jacques Rueff, Edward Bernstein, Robert Triffin, Otmar Emminger, Rinaldo Ossola, Charles Kindleberger, Guido Carli and Robert Roosa--and some of them would later become defectors. Of course I was happy to be in the company of all the great economists of the past who, with the possible exceptions of Fisher and Keynes, were vigorously opposed to flexible exchange rates between countries with inconvertible currencies.
Among the supporters of flexible exchange rates were a couple of Austrians (Haberler and Machlup). Among the fixed-rate crowd, a couple of Brits and an American.
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