Johannes Jäger

This introduction frames the special issue, developed in collaboration with the EuroMemorandum Group, by situating the Euro’s twenty-five-year record against the promises that accompanied its launch. The European Commission’s “One Market, One Money” projected that monetary union would deliver price stability, efficient capital allocation driving convergence and shared prosperity. Contrary to this vision, the contributions to the special issue collectively show that the Euro, paired with its fiscal straitjacket, has instead produced stagnation, amplified crises, and solidified core-periphery structures. While the ECB proved more adaptable than its mandate suggested, its crisis-driven interventions addressed symptoms rather than structural causes. The introduction concludes by identifying two challenges that urgently require further research: decarbonization and transformed geopolitical conditions, both of which demand fiscal and industrial policy capacities that current EU governance structures obstruct. The introduction builds on three streams of critical scholarship: post-Keynesian macroeconomics, core-periphery political economy, and neo-Gramscian analyses of European integration to situate the special issue’s contributions.

The chapter starts with an overview of global environmental problems and asks whether green finance can address them. In order to do so, the chapter provides a brief history of green finance and presents a framework for understanding different approaches to green finance. Based on the expected mechanisms and underlying theories, the scope and the goals of green financial strategies and green central bank policies, we distinguish between neoliberal, reformist, and transformative-progressive forms of green finance. Whilst neoliberal forms of green finance assume commensurability and the idea that market-based mechanisms will solve environmental problems, reformist perspectives are sceptical and demand strict regulations and government policies. In so doing, reformist measures are likely to contribute to green growth. Transformative-progressive perspectives on green finance go beyond reformist approaches and support a socio-ecological transformation of the mode of production that aims at allowing equal access for all to the use of nature without destroying the ecological foundations of the planet. Based on this framework the chapter introduces the contributions in the book.

The chapter summarises important findings from the contributions of the book. Based on these findings, and applying the distinction between neoliberal, reformist and transformative-progressive forms of green finance, we discuss the future of finance and its likely impact on the environment. We refer to two scenarios developed in a recent Report to the Club of Rome that discusses two opposing ways of dealing with the threat of a climate catastrophe: firstly, “Too little, too late”, and secondly “The great leap”. Under the assumption that neoliberal forms of green finance continue to predominate, it is concluded that they will contribute to the first scenario. The implications of assuming the rise of reformist forms of green finance are not completely clear. Whether they will feed into the second scenario depends on the specific configuration and the speed under which these measures are undertaken. Although they have not yet gained wide acceptance, implementing transformative-progressive strategies certainly contributes to a socio-ecological transformation and supports the realisation of the second scenario. It is political processes that will determine which form of green finance will prevail, and hence, what will be the future of our planet.