The free movement of capital is not new

The free movement of capital is not new, it is one of the essential pillars of the European Union and one of the keys to understanding its model of economic organization.

Along with the free movement of workers, establishments and services, the free movement of capital constitutes one of the so-called "fundamental" freedoms of the EU, protected by the Treaty on its Functioning. Scheduled from the early stages of European construction, it only asserted itself gradually and yet found only significant materialization with the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty.

A legal translation of the European project The EU cannot be understood outside its essential axis, the continental development of capitalism and the organization of productive forces on this scale. Passing in stages from a simple free trade area to a single market, European construction is reaching a degree of integration unknown elsewhere, with liberal economists seeking the constitution of an "optimal currency area in Europe". The great freedoms of movement then constitute the legal translation of this project.

Promoting the circulation of capital between the various European states should make it possible, from the perspective defended by the EU, to develop the market on a European scale. From an institutional point of view, the free movement of capital enjoys decisive weight, making it possible to drastically roll back the administrative, social and political control of these flows. The EU Court of Justice is thus opposed to public measures requiring prior authorization for the realization of investments, European judges even going so far as to sanction measures aimed at limiting the "complete liberalization of certain capital movements" . The legal protection of the free movement of capital is therefore clearly asserted as a means of facilitating the control and use of the wealth created by workers.

It is therefore a central tool in the intensification of the expropriation of these. Above all, the place occupied by the free movement of capital tells about the very nature of the EU. The European elites regularly claim to want to establish convergence between the variou

s Member States, a circulation of savings as an assurance of common and harmonious development.

“Faced with the stalemate in economic policies, the EU now intends to use the lever of strengthening the free movement of capital in Europe as a means of raising levels of economic production, particularly following Brexit. "