The global crisis has fueled the development of architecture and mechanisms of global financial governance, in which the European Union is playing an important role. The EU is declaring its unfailing support for “effective multilateralism”. Yet in effect it is not much committed to such transformations that would undermine the advancement of its own agenda in the multipartite frameworks.
The EU participation in global financial governance envelops the following interrelated components:
- Connecting the representatives of the EU and its member-states in international institutions to the elaboration of global agenda in issues of financial governance;
- Monitoring the implementation of global decisions in the EU space;
- Refining the concepts, methods and techniques of financial governance in general. Thus, the EU is a pathfinder in the acknowledgment of the essential link between financial and economical governance;
- Direct “export” of European instruments and standards of financial regulation.
In this paper the concept of multilevel governance is employed to emphasize the space dimension of political governance, as well as specific importance of liaisons, coalitions and interactions, which transcend territorial borders and go beyond spheres of national control. On the one hand, close involvement of the EU in the interplay with institutions and structures of global governance is favorable for its member-states: it enhances their own international influence. On the other hand, the states, if acting on their own, have to take into account the risk of coming to face some unwanted binding global recommendations they will be unable to avoid. Such considerations make it easier for the European Commission to achieve approximation of the positions of the obstinate member-states as concerns problems of governing European finances.