Background for the workshop:
The conference on Central Banks and International Law is co-organized by Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Department of Private law and PluriCourts at the University of Oslo, Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris are co-organising a conference on central banks and international law.
The central bank is the independent monetary authority of a state. In the last decades, central bank policymaking has predominantly operated within a specific framework: central bank independence as the institutional set-up; price stability as the primary target of its monetary policy; interest rates as the operational tools. Traditionally, the choice of monetary policy is often considered to be at the core of states’ sovereignty and therefore traditionally little regulated in international law. It is therefore tempting to assume that international law tendencies do not influence central banks’ evolving policies and legal framework.
However, the challenges that central banks are asked to deal with are increasingly of a global nature. In response to the global financial crisis starting in 2007, even more so under the current global covid-19 pandemic crisis, as well as in response to the ongoing climate crisis, we see that central banks across a vast number of jurisdictions have gained an expanding role in crisis management. Price instability and financial instability – whether influenced by reckless subprime loan practices, hurricanes or global pandemics or climate crisis related events such as hurricanes, or wars – are global in nature and have to be dealt with globally through cooperation.
This conference on central banks and international law will seek to shed light on how international law shapes central bank policies and how central banks shapes international law. It will discuss more traditional topics on central banks and sovereign immunity and topics of an increasing relevance such as sanctions against central banks. It will also explore how the expansive role of central banks is influenced by the availability of other viable crisis resolution measures in international law related to in particular the climate crises and sovereignty debt crises.
The conference is a part of the research project Central Banks’ expanded role in financial markets. The project is a collaboration between the faculty of law at the University of Oslo and Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. The project and the conference benefit from funding from the Finance Market Fund (managed by the Norwegian Research Council). The conference also benefits from generous funding from Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris – CUNP.
Please contact astrid.iversen@inn.no if you would like to attend the conference physically.