Capitalists against ordoliberals: the misfortunes of market discipline in EMU

One of the key issues for debate on the history of the EU’s economic and monetary union has been the influence of ordoliberal ideas. Many authors attribute to such ideas an important influence in the choices that have governed the development of EMU. Explicitly or implicitly, the argument is that ordoliberal ideas entrench the preferences of capital regarding the institutional design of EMU. This paper challenges this view by showing that throughout the history of EMU, the preferences of corporate capitalists have consistently been at odds with ordoliberal prescriptions. Corporate capitalists have favoured institutional solutions that stabilise important financial markets by derisking crucial financial assets: member state currencies initially, member state debt subsequently. The tension between corporate preferences and ordoliberal prescriptions has always been resolved in favour of the former. The paper stands at the crossroads of political economy and political sociology. In terms of sources and methods, I mostly rely on documentary evidence and interviews with key representatives of the corporate community, namely leaders of the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe and the European League for Economic Cooperation but also leaders from France’s largest banks, as well as top-ranking financial bureaucrats (former ECB executives, Treasury directors, etc.). The interviews have been conducted on a rolling basis since 2017 in the context of my research on the Eurozone crisis and post-2020 on NGEU and the prospect for a permanent EU fiscal capacity.