This talk examines how financial liberalisation and the rise of speculative capital reshaped European monetary cooperation and drove the commitment to the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Martin Fischer shows how policymakers in Italy, France, and Germany interpreted the evolving behaviour of foreign-exchange markets as increasingly detached from economic fundamentals and politically destabilising.

Faced with markets that no longer fit established interpretive frameworks, policymakers identified the limits of existing institutional arrangements and reassessed the legitimacy of market influence. Across national contexts, they converged on the view that restoring public authority over monetary relations required institutional innovation.

Therefore, Fischer argues that EMU emerged not primarily as a market-enhancing or neoliberal project, but as a protective mechanism designed to shield European cooperation from the destabilising effects of globalised finance. By tracing these interpretive and normative evaluations, it highlights the political and cognitive processes through which states navigate uncertainty and reassert authority in an era of mobile capital.

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