This paper asserts that attempts to resolve the crisis through recent changes in European meta-governance are just the latest phase in a project to secure 'continual adjustment' in European societies to the systemic demands of competitiveness. Utilising a New Materialist approach, the paper locates the structural pressures experienced by European economies, polities and societies in the process of world market integration. It is argued that a scalarrelational perspective drawn from critical geography can help to illuminate the ways in which the scale of the world market is becoming 'ecologically dominant' over a series of other economic, political and social scales. Understanding continual adjustment in this way suggests that the outcome of crisis management and restructuring is unlikely to be 'return to normalcy' and the scope for alternative more Keynesian programmes of reform through EU meta-governance are highly constrained.