Searching a Fix for International Financial Markets: The European Union and Domestic Political-Economy Changes

The paper investigates the sources of the EU position in the G20 meetings convened in response to the global financial crisis of 2007-09. In particular, the paper investigates the factors that led the EU to campaign for strengthening the role of public authority and for giving priority to financial stability and social protection in international financial regulation. The argument of the paper is that the sources of the EU position lie in lie in the convergence of views of the largest EU member states around a specific approach to financial capitalism. Indeed, the crisis has shifted the EU away from the ‘neoliberal’ towards the ‘regulated’ model, as attested by the content of EU financial sector policies.