Money is a public good. The regulation of its creation, supply and distribution is of national and international interest. Monetary stability is an important regulatory goal conducted through an interaction of economic, political, religious factors as well as legislative action. The state plays an intermediary role, bridging domestic interests and international interests. Increasing interdependence between national economic systems and international obligations sometimes leads to the manipulation of systems as well as currency wars. Regulation is done through co-operative international action since domestic regulators are no longer sufficiently equipped to do so. Resultantly, there is an emergence of new structural paradigms to deal with it. Meanwhile, states still enjoy certain residual competences of sovereignty. Numerous legal factors act as constraints on sovereignty with far reaching implications on states’ regulatory space. In light of the divergence of regulatory objectives, there is an apparent need to balance municipal with international interests on the regulation of the monetary system. / Mercantile Law / LLM

Money is a public good. The regulation of its creation, supply and distribution is of national and international interest. Monetary stability is an important regulatory goal conducted through an interaction of economic, political, religious factors as well as legislative action. The state plays an intermediary role, bridging domestic interests and international interests. Increasing interdependence between national economic systems and international obligations sometimes leads to the manipulation of systems as well as currency wars. Regulation is done through co-operative international action since domestic regulators are no longer sufficiently equipped to do so. Resultantly, there is an emergence of new structural paradigms to deal with it. Meanwhile, states still enjoy certain residual competences of sovereignty. Numerous legal factors act as constraints on sovereignty with far reaching implications on states’ regulatory space. In light of the divergence of regulatory objectives, there is an apparent need to balance municipal with international interests on the regulation of the monetary system. / Mercantile Law / LL. M.

This thesis analyses whether the concept of monetary sovereignty evolves under the impact of globalization and financial integration, and provides a framework for assessing what this implies. Thereby, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of both the contemporary exercise of sovereign powers in monetary and financial matters and of the driving forces behind the evolution of international law in this field. As elaborated in chapter 1, the contemporary concept of monetary sovereignty proposed by this thesis is not static but dynamic in nature. Due to the dual nature of sovereignty as a concept having not only positive but also important normative components, monetary sovereignty cannot become eroded under the impact of legal and economic constraints. Chapter 2 examines the ongoing hybridization of international monetary law arising from changes in the sources of this complex body of law, from the unsuitability of the categories of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ law for characterizing all normative evolutions in this field, and from the rise of private and transnational monetary law. Chapter 3 scrutinizes the phenomenon of exchange rate misalignment under monetary and trade law. Intrinsically related, it assesses which aspects of the IMF’s legal framework should be reformed in order to tackle contemporary challenges to the stability of the international monetary system, such as global current account imbalances. Chapter 4 analyses the increasing regionalization of monetary sovereignty. It argues that, to the extent that transferring sovereign powers to a monetary union is what provides a state’s population with maximum monetary and financial stability, the underlying transfers are not a surrender of monetary sovereignty, but its effective exercise under the form of cooperative sovereignty. Finally, chapter 5 assesses the implications of the contemporary concept of monetary sovereignty proposed herein for the reorganization of the international financial architecture in the wake of the Great Recession.