The Eurozone crisis and the European corporate elite: bringing corporate actors into focus

Abstract

This paper uses a framework referred to as the ‘corporate reconstruction of European capitalism theory of integration’ to analyse the European Union’s response to the Eurozone crisis. Most political economy analyses of the Eurozone crisis have focused on political leaders, clashes between creditor and debtor member states and public opinions in analysing the handling of the crisis. This paper focuses instead on the input of corporate actors. It is argued that both the setting up of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the handling of its crisis were congenial to corporate preferences. Europe’s nascent corporate elite was concerned with eliminating currency risk when the EMU was set up and therefore did not push for fiscal federalism. When the flawed architecture of the Eurozone transformed that currency risk into sovereign credit risk, corporate preferences adapted and now favoured fiscal liability pooling and ultimately the setting up of a fiscal union.

Keywords:

• Eurozone crisis
• corporate elite
• political economy
• macroeconomic policy
• institutions
• fiscal liability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The theory posits the impossibility of simultaneously pursuing the above-mentioned three policy objectives.

2 Apart from Cornelis van der Klugt, who succeeded Wisse Dekker, CEO in 1983.

3 In the same public appearance, Ackermann also admitted that because ‘the first 10 years were so successful we forgot a little bit to really push for the next steps, namely [ … ] some sort of fiscal union’.

4 From 13:30 onwards at http://piie.com/events/event_detail.cfm?EventID=383 (accessed 14 October 2015).

5 See interview with Harald Schumann, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbZxS6uHFXc (accessed 31 January 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christakis Georgiou

Christakis Georgiou recently completed his PhD on the role of French corporations in European integration during 1986–2008. He is an Associate Scholar at the Centre d'études politiques de l'Europe latine, and his research interests include global and European political economy and political business history. His current research project compares the influence of American and European corporate elites in promoting centralized macroeconomic policies in their respective polities.