ABSTRACT
Ongoing European financial market integration relies on the creation of harmonised and centralised market infrastructures: the little-known institutions and systems that settle financial transactions across borders. Since the constitutional conception of market integration within the European Union (EU) entails creating ‘a level playing field’ for competition, a fundamental problem emerges of how to provide that centralisation and harmonisation without violating the core principles of an open market economy either through private monopolisation or public privatisation. This chapter presents a socio-technological study of a recent major infrastructure initiative by the European Central Bank, called Target2-Securities (T2S). Embedding the analysis of the struggles and debates around the birth and development of T2S in an analysis of the structural problem of competition and centralisation in European financial market integration, this chapter suggests an alternative perspective to performativity dominating the research field.
