Home>The European Investor State: when public actors act like investors, Interview with Ulrike Lepont and Matthias Thiemann

08.03.2024

The European Investor State: when public actors act like investors, Interview with Ulrike Lepont and Matthias Thiemann

In the wake of financial, sovereign debt and health crises, public interventions in the European economy have taken on a new level of breadth, marking a reentry in force of the state in economic life that goes beyond the regulatory state. Yet, these interventions do not follow the old Keynesian interventions neither, being shaped through a particular logic of investment that link public and private actors in a particular configuration. By the concept of “European Investor state”, Ulrike Lepont and Matthias Thiemann refer to the redefinition of the role of the EU and its member states in the economy as “investors,” in reference to private investment funds, which the state seeks both to imitate and to enroll. 

In this video, they present a special issue of the journal Competition and Change on “The European Investor State”, that they co-edited.

Interview by Véronique Etienne, January 2024.
Download the transcript of the interview (PDF, 73 ko).

Links to the articles of this issue (Volume 28 Issue 3-4, July 2024, Special Issue: The European Investor State):