ABSTRACT
The original recipe combined regulated markets in agriculture, coal and steel and large public sectors related to communication, transport and banking infrastructures with a commitment to free trade and a general understanding of market liberalism in opposition to Eastern European socialism and central planning. In terms of neoliberalization, the Maastricht decision to create monetary union in 1991 was critical within and beyond Europe since criteria have been established to severely restrict national public finance across the member states of Europe’s monetary union. A transnational perspective of neoliberalization takes people on a journey from the double continent of “Eurafrica” to the global financial institutions and the global South, and back again to Paris, Bonn/Berlin and Brussels. The difficulties of a high number of mixed European economies and regulated capitalism in Europe instead came to sharp relief in the course of the 1970s after the demise of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates.
