The global context within which European integration takes place is changing. The rise of China continues and the leadership of the USA has come under strain, while the global economy remains trapped in a phase of stagnation. We argue that, to capture these dynamics, EU studies would benefit from tracing the interactions between global order and contemporary dynamics within the EU. European integration has been decisively shaped by two phases of US-led global order in the past. However, we argue that a new global disorder has emerged. The decentring of globalization, geopolitical turbulence, monetary and financial instabilities and ideological fluidity are reshaping the context within which EU integration unfolds. This presents an old European question but under a new set of volatile conditions: how to secure a degree of relative autonomy within a rapidly changing global political economy.

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Brexit creates an opportunity for alternative European financial centres. However, no comprehensive empirical analysis of the strategic positioning of actors within these financial centres has been conducted. In this article we outline findings from an extensive research project which we conducted in Frankfurt and Paris, two of the main ÔrivalsÕ to the City of London, in the aftermath of Brexit. We outline the core findings from this project and argue that the emerging competition between Frankfurt and Paris is shaped through four related axes: diversity, path dependency, territory and regulatory stability. Our analysis has implications for two bodies of literature within EU studies. First, inter-governmentalist and supra-nationalist approaches would benefit from interrogating more closely the contested sub-national politics of financial centres. Second, our analysis adds to a growing body of literature on European disintegration by interrogating the interaction of fragmentary and integrative dynamics in the sphere of European finance.

Across the advanced capitalist states, the post‐crisis conjuncture has been characterised by both marked continuity and profound change. While regressive distributional trends in place before the 2008 crisis have intensified, a number of highly unorthodox policy interventions have also emerged. In particular, a new regime of “loose” monetary policy has crystallised, exemplified by record low interest rates and sustained programmes of quantitative easing. Existing approaches within economic geography are, we contend, ill‐equipped to deal with these transformations. Engaging with the “variegated neoliberalisation approach” – associated with Jamie Peck and his collaborators – the article argues that existing conceptualisations of neoliberalisation understate the key significance that central state institutions play in securing advanced capitalist development. They therefore miss the key role that monetary indiscipline has played in sustaining capitalist development since 2008. This argument is substantiated empirically through a case study of state intervention in the UK housing market in the post‐crisis conjuncture. Focusing on the Help to Buy Scheme and the buy‐to‐let market, the article argues that the UK's loose monetary policy regime has produced novel patterns of spatial divergence across the UK regions while simultaneously consolidating the UK's dysfunctional financialised model of capitalism.