ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the political and ideological agency of an emergent European transnational capitalist class in the socioeconomic governance of the European Union (EU) by examining the case of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). It presents an analysis of the evolution of the ERT's strategic project and the initiating role the Round Table played in the relaunching of the integration process from Europe 1992 to Maastricht. The chapter aims to contribute to a research agenda that reclaims the centrality of class agency in the study of political economy. It interprets the ERT as one such organization with respect to the process of transnational class formation in Europe. The chapter examines how the ERT has used this position to shape European socioeconomic governance. It argues that the European Round Table has developed into a key elite organization articulating and defining the interests of this class and propagating them vis-a-vis the European institutions and within public debate.
