How do regulatory structures evolve in EU financial governance? Incorporating insights from a variety of disciplines, Governing Finance in Europe provides a comprehensive framework to investigate the dynamics leading to centralisation, decentralisation and fragmentation in EU financial regulation.

Global finance is in the middle of a radical transformation fueled by innovative financial technologies. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digitization of retail financial services in Europe. Institutional interest and digital asset markets are also growing blurring the boundaries between the token economy and traditional finance. Blockchain, AI, quantum computing and decentralised finance (DeFI) are setting the stage for a global battle of business models and philosophies. The post-Brexit EU cannot afford to ignore the promise of digital finance. But the Union is struggling to keep pace with global innovation hubs, particularly when it comes to experimenting with new digital forms of capital raising. Calibrating the EU digital finance strategy is a balancing act that requires a deep understanding of the factors driving the transformation, be they legal, cultural, political or economic, as well as their many implications. The same FinTech inventions that use AI, machine learning and big data to facilitate access to credit may also establish invisible barriers that further social, racial and religious exclusion. The way digital finance actors source, use, and record information presents countless consumer protection concerns. The EU’s strategic response has been years in the making and, finally, in September 2020 the Commission released a Digital Finance Package. This special issue collects contributions from leading scholars who scrutinize the challenges digital finance presents for the EU internal market and financial market regulation from multiple public policy perspectives. Author contributions adopt a critical yet constructive and solutions-oriented approach. They aim to provide policy-relevant research and ideas shedding light on the complexities of the digital finance promise. They also offer solid proposals for reform of EU financial services law.

Global finance is in the middle of a radical transformation fueled by innovative financial technologies. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the digitization of retail financial services in Europe. Institutional interest and digital asset markets are also growing blurring the boundaries between the token economy and traditional finance. Blockchain, AI, quantum computing and decentralised finance (DeFI) are setting the stage for a global battle of business models and philosophies. The post-Brexit EU cannot afford to ignore the promise of digital finance. But the Union is struggling to keep pace with global innovation hubs, particularly when it comes to experimenting with new digital forms of capital raising. Calibrating the EU digital finance strategy is a balancing act that requires a deep understanding of the factors driving the transformation, be they legal, cultural, political or economic, as well as their many implications. The same FinTech inventions that use AI, machine learning and big data to facilitate access to credit may also establish invisible barriers that further social, racial and religious exclusion. The way digital finance actors source, use, and record information presents countless consumer protection concerns. The EU’s strategic response has been years in the making and, finally, in September 2020 the Commission released a Digital Finance Package. This special issue collects contributions from leading scholars who scrutinize the challenges digital finance presents for the EU internal market and financial market regulation from multiple public policy perspectives. Author contributions adopt a critical yet constructive and solutions-oriented approach. They aim to provide policy-relevant research and ideas shedding light on the complexities of the digital finance promise. They also offer solid proposals for reform of EU financial services law.

This timely book presents an in-depth investigation of who benefits from European financial market regulatory measures and how decision-makers and stakeholders are held politically and administratively accountable. The extensive study illustrates the full range of the actors involved in key regulatory processes such as the regulation of high-frequency trading and the activities of central-clearing counterparties.

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a central actor in financial governance. Hardly any corner of European financial markets remains untouched by EU rules, and key regulatory competences have been shifted from national authorities to supranational ones. At the same time, the global context has become ever more important for how and to what effect the EU regulates its financial markets. On the one hand, EU policymaking is embedded in global initiatives such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. On the other hand, the EU now rivals the USA in its ability to shape global rules. Scholars and practitioners cannot make sense of EU rulemaking without studying its links to global financial governance, just as to understand how global initiatives evolve they have to appreciate the rise of the EU as a global regulatory force. This book charts and analyses this centrality of the European-global link in financial governance for the first time. Its chapters, written by experts in the specific fields, cover the whole breadth of financial markets. They range from banking, auditing and accounting to derivatives trading, money laundering, and tax governance. This book offers comprehensive coverage of: how and why global and European financial governance have co-evolved over time; how global and European rules, institutions, and actors are linked today; and what this implies for future global and European financial governance. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of either global or European financial regulation.

The aim of this edited volume is to bring together the views of expert academics and practitioners on the latest regulatory developments in sustainable finance in Europe. The volume includes a wide range of cutting-edge issues, which relate to three main themes along which the volume is structured: (1) corporate governance; (2) financial stability; and (3) financial markets. With individual contributions deploying different methods of analysis, including theoretical contributions on the status quo of macro-financial research as well as law and economics approaches, the collection encourages interdisciplinary readership and will appeal to those researching capital markets law, European financial law, and sustainable finance, as well as practitioners within the finance industry.