A User’s Guide to Promoting Euro Internationalisation

Currency internationalisation has been one of International Political Economy’s (IPE) “perennial questions” (Germain and Schwartz 2014, 196). In this policy brief, we introduce a new account of currency internationalisation that emphasises the crucial role of the state in successful internationalisation, in particular for fostering the offshore creation of private credit money. We use this account to better understand the limited international role of the euro to date. We also identify three neglected modalities for promoting EU internationalisation: endorsing cross-border value chains through offshore euro payment chains, more ex-ante clarity on access to euro swap lines for states with large reliance on offshore euros, as well as improving the safe asset status of euro-denominated public debt.