This project examines the governance of financial services in the European Union (EU). This research is both academically interesting and policy relevant. Academic research has not kept pace with new developments in this field, and interdisciplinary research is very much needed, as financial services governance is at the cross road between politics, economics and law. At the practical level, the financial sector is a core part of national economies and one of the most active areas of EU policy making. Moreover, this research will contribute to informing the public discussion in a policy area that is often perceived as 'technical', which tends to limit the public scrutiny of it. For the purposes of this research, the governance of financial services in the EU includes: i) the institutional framework through which policies are made; ii) regulation, which is comprised of market-making and market-framing measures; and iii) supervision, that is: the monitoring and enforcement of regulation as well as the practical cooperation between supervisory authorities. First, the project will map the complex institutional framework underpinning financial services governance in the EU, explaining how such framework interplays with regulatory and supervisory arrangements in international arenas and in selected countries. Second, through competitive hypotheses testing, the project will analyse the EU policy-making processes in the financial sector: the main policy-makers and stakeholders involved; their resources, relationships and influence on the policy process; and the outcome. Besides contributing to the policy-oriented debate on financial services regulation and supervision in the EU, the ultimate theoretical goal of the research is to devise an integrated analytical framework that by combining various theoretical approaches and identifying their scope conditions could account for financial services governance in the EU, advancing theories of EU policy making.