The article applies the contested concept of hegemony to the euro and the eurozone crisis of 2009–12 to critically scrutinise the parameters and limits of the euro reform process. Conceptualising the euro as a ‘public good’ designed to help stabilise and legitimise the EU’s regional market order is a useful ideational starting point for critical inquiry, one that is in line with hegemonic stability theory. However, drawing on neo-Gramscian theory, the article contends that, in practice, the euro has been self-limited through its ‘external’ and ‘internal’ embedding in a neoliberal form of ‘minimal hegemony’. While the reform process has achieved some notable stabilising changes to the support structures and governance of the euro, nevertheless, reform has largely failed to tackle fundamental problems at the heart of the euro’s tendency towards crisis: the single currency’s subordination to a global financial regime dominated by neoliberalism, Germany’s neo-mercantilist dominance of the eurozone economy and fundamental differences of macroeconomic conceptualisation and preferences between the eurozone’s core states, France and Germany. The article critically scrutinises developments in eurozone monetary policy in the wake of the crisis to demonstratively argue that the euro remains locked in to a form of minimal hegemony that constrains the development of the euro as a ‘deep and genuine’ public good.

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欧元危机、欧元改革和霸权问题

本文将有争议的霸权概念应用于欧元和 2009-12 年的欧元区危机，以批判性地审视欧元改革进程的参数和限制。将欧元概念化为旨在帮助欧盟区域市场秩序稳定和合法化的“公共产品”，是批判性调查的一个有用的概念起点，符合霸权稳定理论。然而，文章借鉴新葛兰西理论，认为在实践中，欧元通过其“外部”和“内部”嵌入“最小霸权”的新自由主义形式而自我限制。虽然改革进程在欧元的支持结构和治理方面取得了一些显着的稳定变化，但是，改革在很大程度上未能解决欧元危机趋势的核心问题：单一货币从属于由新自由主义主导的全球金融体系，德国在欧元区经济中的新重商主义主导地位以及宏观经济概念和偏好的根本差异。欧元区的核心国家，法国和德国。这篇文章批判性地审视了危机后欧元区货币政策的发展，以论证欧元仍然被锁定在一种最小霸权的形式上，这种霸权限制了欧元作为“深刻而真正的”公共产品的发展。德国在欧元区经济中的新重商主义主导地位以及欧元区核心国家法国和德国之间宏观经济概念和偏好的根本差异。这篇文章批判性地审视了危机后欧元区货币政策的发展，以论证欧元仍然被锁定在一种最小霸权的形式上，这种霸权限制了欧元作为“深刻而真正的”公共产品的发展。德国在欧元区经济中的新重商主义主导地位以及欧元区核心国家法国和德国之间宏观经济概念和偏好的根本差异。这篇文章批判性地审视了危机后欧元区货币政策的发展，以论证欧元仍然被锁定在一种最小霸权的形式上，这种霸权限制了欧元作为“深刻而真正的”公共产品的发展。