Building faith in a common future, which is at the core of the making of a common currency, has been declining since the turn of the 1980s. The economic neoliberalism that diffused worldwide after the collapse of the Gold Exchange Standard and the economic crisis of the mid 1970s challenged the...

This paper sets out to ask what happened between 1981 and 1986 to the French policy of full employment. The cautious path followed led to the combination of long-term industrial restructuring with comprehensive monitoring of the labor market. Problems arose on both sides. Short-term policies on...