The resurgence of German capital in Europe: EU integration and the restructuring of Atlantic networks of interlocking directorates after 1991

ABSTRACT

European integration is interpreted in this paper as the route by which (West) Germany, profiting from close ties with the English-speaking West, was able to restore its full sovereignty and economic pre-eminence in Europe. Yet in shaping the actual integration process, it was France which played the key role. Most of the landmark steps towards the current EU were French proposals to pre-empt Anglophone–German collusion; creating European structures in which a resurgence of Germany (politically and economically) was made subject to permanent negotiation. German unification in 1991 removed the one reason why successive governments of the Federal Republic had gone along with this. Paradoxically, sovereign Germany today finds itself bound by the dense networks of consultation and decision-making which make the EU unique in the field of regional integration. The paper shows that between 1992 and 2005, German capital has moved to the centre of the network of corporate interlocks in the North Atlantic area. This helps to explain why in the post-1991, post-Soviet era of neoliberal, finance-driven globalisation, Germany is increasingly ‘speaking for Europe’, as its corporations have become nodal points in the communication structures through which the responses to the challenges facing the EU and the West at large are being shaped.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational capital
• Germany
• European integration
• interlocking directorates
• corporate structures

Notes

1. This is a revised version of a paper presented by van der Pijl and Raviv at the PSA Annual Conference, Bath, 11–13 April 2007. The authors thank Magnus Ryner, the panel convenor, and other participants for their comments. The paper also builds on earlier collaborative work of Holman and van der Pijl (1996, 2003). Research support for the 2005 interlock network analysis was provided by the British Academy under grant SG 41935. In rewriting the paper, the comments of three anonymous reviewers for RIPE were an important help.

2. Companies and banks headquartered in Germany. We abstract from tax haven domicile making Volkswagen no longer German or Pirelli no longer Italian (Palan, Murphy and Chavagneux, 2010: 143)

3. In smaller economies like the Netherlands this is no longer the case, see Heemskerk (2007).

4. Morgan Grenfell was taken over by Deutsche Bank in November 1989.

5. Proposals like the 1994 Schäuble/ Lamers paper for a core group of EU states around Germany and France, or Joschka Fischer's Humboldt speech of 2000 are already echoes of a past that for all intents and purposes had been brought to a close (Schäuble and Lamers, 1994; Fischer, 2000).