Euro as the currency of the EU’s green transition

Abstract

AbstractStefan Eich’s The Currency of Politics offers us a new way of looking at the EU’s sustainable finance trend, one that allows us to see how the ‘greening’ financial transactions creates “green money” and thus intertwines with questions of justice and democracy. In this contribution I explore how The Currency of Politics can help us understand the significance and the constitutional implications of the transformation of the euro into the ‘currency of the green transition’ as it has been referred to by Eurogroup’s President in 2021. I show how the three trends of EU green bond issuance, granular sustainable finance regulation and the progressive greening of monetary policy are moulding the euro in a political sense as the ‘currency of the green transition’ as much as the legal tender. Euro currency becomes in this sense ‘a governance project’ for the sustainable transition. This perspective offers multiple points of engagement with the themes of Stefan Eich’s important book. For example, the claim of privatisation of money creation must be qualified to reflect on the implications of the granular way in which EU law defines what green money is. At the same time, while a ‘green currency’ creates spaces for engagement and new forms of organising a polity, it still remains largely removed from ordinary citizens as ‘technocratic’ rather than ‘democratic’ self-government.