Capital Markets Union and Strategic Constructivism

Capital Markets Union (CMU) has been proposed to complement Banking Union and ultimately to complete Economic and Monetary Union. This paper examines the negotiations on CMU through the lens of strategic constructivism, that is by examining the persuasive practices that political (or, in this case, bureaucratic) agents employ to promote a certain project by ‘framing it’ in a specific ways, or in different ways depending on the specific audiences they target. It is argued that CMU has been push forward first and foremost by the European Commission, with the strong support of specific parts of the financial industry and the United Kingdom government. The Commission has deliberately framed different ways of understanding CMU (and its fundamental objectives), so as to create a composite constituency of support that would be instrumental in bringing the project to fruition.