European Union financial integration, a geography perspective

Meeteren, Michiel van

doi:10.1111/gec3.12424

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 147 publications

(221 reference statements)

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“…However, it would appear that the Fintech investment round has already shuffled the cards to the benefit of the dominant financial centres in Europe, the UK in particular, putting serious external constraints on the capacity of Brussels to become a leading Fintech hub. Brussels’ position then reflects the decline in traditional financial centre functions, comparable with its second-tier European peers, where European integration accelerated financial relocations to London (Fernandez, 2011; Van Meeteren, 2019), while subsidiaries of neighbouring European banks assumed an ever-larger Belgian footprint – a development exacerbated by the 2007–2009 financial crisis in which domestic players Dexia and Fortis collapsed. Today, Belgian finance is dominated by a small number of universal banks: Belfius, KBC and foreign-owned BNP Paribas Fortis, ING and, to a lesser degree, Deutsche Bank.…”

Section: Methodology: Studying Economic Geographies Of Fintechmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With B-Hive, the state broadened the field of industry representatives beyond the traditional associations (Febelfin, Assuralia) – some of whom felt somewhat sidestepped as a consequence. Nevertheless, the finance minister successfully nudged incumbent finance to embrace Fintech, with incumbents more or less reluctantly going along in the hope the government will continue to ‘protect their patch’ in an uncertain digitizing future, for instance when translating EU legislation such as the recent European Payment Services Directive (see Van Meeteren, 2019) into Belgian law. In fact, most incumbents happily accepted the government’s nudge, having embraced B-Hive as a way to become Fintech-savvy with the aim of retaining their established oligopolies.…”

Section: The Fin-tech-state Trianglementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Financial geography emerged at a moment in economic geography when the taxonomy of sectorially organized ‘industrial geographies’ started to include services (Barnes et al., 2007; Daniels, 1985). Gradually, as finance became defined as the growth machine of the 1980s (Van Meeteren, 2019), the path of ‘service geography research’ forked into ‘producer services geography’ and eventually into ‘geographies of money and finance’ (Leyshon, 1995). Since then, financial geography has grown into an increasingly diverse subdiscipline, borrowing from diverse foci in geographical thinking, with much work theorizing in relative independence from its economic geography parent (Aalbers, 2015).…”

Section: Introduction: Financial Geography At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Strategic coupling between finance, technology and the state: Cultivating a Fintech ecosystem for incumbent finance

2019

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The rise of Fintech challenges established financial centres and incumbent financial institutions to rethink their strategies to remain obligatory passage points in the age of digitizing finance. To appreciate these changes, it is important to maintain theoretical interchange between developments in financial geography and economic geography, its parent discipline. In this paper, we argue that the ways in which evolutionary economic geography impacts strategic coupling in global financial networks are crucial to grasp tomorrow’s geographies of Fintech. Through an in-depth examination of Brussels, we analyse the potential of Fintech opening a window of locational opportunity in financial services. Belgium has put together a strategy to seize this window by leveraging its politically neutral image and Brussels’ existing niche in financial collaboration and infrastructural plumbing. The latter status is exemplified by the presence of global players SWIFT and Euroclear. We analyse how Belgian entrepreneurs and politicians assess Brussels’ locational resources, and strategically couple big financial institutions with small tech startups in order to cultivate a Fintech ecosystem in the service of incumbent finance, constituting a Fin-Tech-State triangle. As such, we document and analyse how the coalescence of finance and technology offers new opportunities for second-tier financial centres, while highlighting the difficulties in reaping these in practice.

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Section: Methodology: Studying Economic Geographies Of Fintechmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Fin-tech-state Trianglementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: Financial Geography At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Strategic coupling between finance, technology and the state: Cultivating a Fintech ecosystem for incumbent finance

2019

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“…The provision of infrastructure that eases bank’s operations across borders but stops short of unification continued across different ‘conjunctures’ of European financial integration (Van Meeteren, 2019), for example, through increased transparency. Even the preparations for monetary union and the provision of the necessary infrastructure were built on national building blocks, not least the ESCB and accompanying payments infrastructure (especially the Eurozone payment system (TARGET2) 8 ).…”

Section: Contradiction and Change - Theoretical And Historical Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

From “combined-but-not-unified” to “integrated isolation” - Greek banking in Europe 2010–2015

Labrinidis

Lindo

2022

Competition & Change

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Between 2010 and 2015 Greek banks received capital injections as part of an EU-led rescue package that left the Greek state with large losses on their investments and a debt to repay; in the most acute moments of the crisis the European central bank twice forced the Bank of Greece to assume sole responsibility for any losses on lending to Greek banks, and; in 2015 Greek banks were subject to EU-mandated controls that restricted the transformation of Greek bank deposits into Euros in other forms. Why did European banking infrastructure leave the Greek state facing losses and liabilities alone, while still full members of the EU and Euro Area (EA)? We find that European banking infrastructure is combined-but-not-unified, and that integration requires both. Drawing on Marxist political economy we examine the financial mechanisms in detail and find a scalar split in state provision of banking infrastructure in the EU/EA. At the supranational level, the removal of barriers to cross-border banking and a common rule book. Meanwhile, promises of monetary support, such as deposit guarantees and lending of last resort have largely remained the responsibility of nation states. The combined-but-not-unified structure ensured that when crisis struck, Greece was isolated, yet still fully part of the EU/EA.

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“…This is troubling since the actual geographical structure of the European financial space is co-constitutive of wider processes of economic and political (dis)integration. The history of European integration since the Delors relaunch in 1985 tells us that finance has become an evermore prominent instrument to achieve and complete the European Union (van Meeteren, 2019). Put in more theoretical terms (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stuck in 2012: The hesitant geographies of European financial integration since the Eurozone crisis

Bassens,

Lindo

2023

European Urban and Regional Studies

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At the heart of the Eurozone crisis was a dramatic divergence in interest rates between member states and a reversal of previously booming cross-border credit expansion from ‘core’ to ‘periphery’ by European banks. The resulting crisis and retreat behind national borders across the Eurozone challenged European elites’ decade-long project of producing European scale as a space for financial accumulation. The Eurozone crisis has been well-described but post-crisis geographies of financial integration have received limited attention. We chart the financial positionality of member states and the relations between them in the period 2012–2019 using a variety of metrics including intra-Eurozone cross-border bank lending. The post-crisis period is dominated by the European Central Bank’s determination to do ‘whatever it takes’ to save the Euro and its financial system. The resulting asset purchases give it a qualitatively different place in the Eurozone financial system and end the crisis period’s retreat behind national borders. But they do not restore pre-crisis dynamics, and, in addition, unevenness along national lines remains. The crisis era core and peripheral labels still hold but the data also reveal important nuances: not least that the distribution of giant banks matters and offshore financial centres cut across core/periphery boundaries. Yet, even as there is no return to booming core-to-periphery credit, German lending into the Eurozone and its counterpart, Italian borrowing, symbolizes the continuing fragility of the Eurozone banking system. European Central Bank efforts ended the crisis, but more than asset purchases will be required if we are not to remain stuck in 2012.

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European Union financial integration, a geography perspective

Cited by 5 publications

References 147 publications

Strategic coupling between finance, technology and the state: Cultivating a Fintech ecosystem for incumbent finance

Strategic coupling between finance, technology and the state: Cultivating a Fintech ecosystem for incumbent finance

From “combined-but-not-unified” to “integrated isolation” - Greek banking in Europe 2010–2015

Stuck in 2012: The hesitant geographies of European financial integration since the Eurozone crisis

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