By Baron Henri Estramant.
9 May 2015: Baron Alexandre Lámfalussy, first president of the European Monetary Institute (EMI), a short-lived institution created in 1994 with the sole purpose of setting up the ECB and then willing itself out of existence.
Lámfalussy’s role in forging a path towards a monetary union began in 1976 when he embarked on a career at the Bank for International Settlements, the Basel, Switzerland-based clearinghouse for the world’s central banks. He was promoted to BIS general manager in 1985 and, three years later, joined a committee of central bankers who sketched a road map for the European currency. They included a future president of the ECB, Wim Duisenberg, and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who later became Italian prime minister and president.
Born on 26 April 1929 as Lámfalussy Sándor in Kapuvár, then Kingdom of Hungary, Lámfalussy fled his homeland in 1949 as the Iron Curtain was sealing off eastern Europe. With three friends, he snuck across the snowy border to Austria, en route to a Belgian university scholarship.
Baron Lámfalussy married Anne-Marie Cochard in 1957. The couple had three children. Belgians’ King Albert II awarded him the noble title of baron in 1996.
For more information
European Central Bank: www.ecb.europa.eu/home/html/index.en.html
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2015/html/pr150511.en.html
