Sustaining Global Monetary Cooperation in an Age of Geopolitical Fracture
Plenary Panel VI
This panel explores the future of global monetary cooperation among central banks, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank for International Settlements amid intensifying geopolitical competition. It examines how the return of geopolitics is reshaping the legal and institutional foundations of monetary coordination. Historically, informal cooperation among central banks, anchored in shared norms of multilateralism, non-discrimination, and technocratic independence, has sustained the global monetary order. However, as states increasingly weaponize financial infrastructure, restrict cross-border capital flows, and reorient financial resources toward strategic allies, these principles are under strain. The panel will assess how central banks and international financial institutions can preserve crisis management capacity, liquidity support mechanisms (such as swap lines), and surveillance in a fragmenting monetary order. Panelists will also debate whether the IMF and BIS can adapt their mandates to accommodate geopolitical realities without sacrificing their core regulatory and stability functions, as well as whether the international monetary regime can “muddle through” the rise of geoeconomics or whether a more formalized, resilient legal framework is needed to sustain cooperation in an era of strategic rivalry. Special attention will be given to the legal architecture underpinning dollar dominance and emerging de-dollarization efforts. The panel will consider whether and how new legal instruments, such as regional payment systems, central bank digital currencies, and alternative reserve arrangements, complement or challenge the multilateral monetary order.
Convenor
Michael Waibel is a professor of international law at the University of Vienna whose scholarship centres on international law, international economic law, sovereign debt, and international dispute settlement. His work has been recognised with the Deák Prize, the ESIL Book Prize, and a Leverhulme Prize. He serves as Co Editor in Chief of the European Journal of International Law and Co General Editor of the ICSID Reports. He is a member of MOCOMILA. He previously taught at the University of Cambridge and held visiting positions at St. Gallen and Harvard. He studied law in Vienna, Paris II, and Harvard, economics at the LSE, and worked at the ECB, World Bank, and IMF.
Panelists
Rosa María Lastra is the Sir John Lubbock Chair in Banking Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. She is co-director of the Sovereign Debt Forum, co-director of the UNIDROIT-QMUL Institute of Transnational Law and Vice-Chair of MOCOMILA. She is a renowned author in her areas of expertise and has consulted for the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, the Bank of England, United Nations (UNCTAD), the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the European Parliament. She has served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords during six parliamentary inquiries in 2009, 2021, 2023, 2025 and 2026.
Yan Liu is General Counsel and Director of the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund. She advises the IMF’s Executive Board, management, staff, and country membership on all legal aspects of the Fund’s operations, including its lending, surveillance, capacity development, regulatory and advisory functions. Over her career at the IMF, Ms. Liu has led the Legal Department’s work on a range of policy, country, and strategic issues. This includes reforming IMF policies on lending; helping strengthen central banking and financial sector legal frameworks in response to technological changes; and leading work on corporate and household insolvency, and public debt management.
Pierre-Hugues Verdier is the Sullivan and Cromwell Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School. He is the author of Global Banks on Trial (2020) and co-editor of Comparative International Law (2018), both from Oxford University Press, author of the AJIL article International Finance and the Return of Geopolitics (2025) and special editor of JIEL dual special issue on the same topic. He clerked for the Supreme Court of Canada and practiced at Cleary Gottlieb. He has held visiting positions at Harvard, Chicago, Münster, and the Hebrew University. Verdier holds degrees from McGill and Harvard, and is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Chiara Zilioli has been Director General of Legal Services of the European Central Bank since 2013, leading a team of about 130 lawyers. She is the Chair of MOCOMILA. In 1989, she joined the Legal Service of the Council of Ministers in Brussels; in 1995 she moved to the European Monetary Institute, to prepare the Monetary Union. She holds an LL.M. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the European University Institute. In 2016, she was appointed honorary professor of law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität in Frankfurt. She has published numerous articles and 4 books.