ABSTRACT
EU economic diplomacy in the field of international finance and monetary relations has moved centre stage in the wake of the international economic and financial crisis of 2008. Financial diplomacy is a complex field because of the linkages between monetary, fiscal and financial market policy. For the EU, this adds to the challenge of developing coherent policies because competences and the role of the EU vary between these different policies. In general there is much less de jure or formal EU competence in the area of finance and less informal of de facto competence than in the trade case discussed in the previous chapter. Until the financial crisis, there was also no clear trend towards greater de facto competence, albeit long term and progressive, as in the cases of trade and climate change, which are discussed in the next chapter.
