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Towards an economic law of the enemy in the European Union?
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1725-6739
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EUI; LAW; Working Paper; 2024/12
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MOTA DELGADO, Miguel, Towards an economic law of the enemy in the European Union?, EUI, LAW, Working Paper, 2024/12 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76989
Abstract
This paper contextualises the European Union (EU)’s reaction to the ongoing transformation of the global economic order. This transformation is described as a transition from a liberal intuitionalist order to a “geoeconomic” order, defined by a new approach to economic interdependence. Once understood as a barrier to conflict, economic interdependence is increasingly perceived as a means of geostrategic power projection. The paper explains how, in this context, the EU began framing economic dependence on certain non-EU actors as a threat to an emerging form of European sovereignty, usually referred to as (open) strategic autonomy. By “securitising” the economy, the EU was able to deploy regulatory tactics seemingly at odds with its constitutional charter, and values such as the rule of law. Legal instruments on, inter alia, inward investment screening, trade defence, public procurement, and competition, started to be mobilised by the EU to guard against the “weaponisation of interdependence” by third countries. The paper considers, in particular, whether this regulatory strategy is liable to generate an “economic law of the enemy” in the EU. In an analogy with Günther Jakobs influential theory of the criminal law of the enemy (Feindstrafrecht), this paper introduces the concept of “economic law of the enemy” (or Feindwirtschaftsrecht) to describe the regulatory output of the EU’s securitisation of the economy. This form of economic law is characterised by an exceptional treatment of certain economic operators, liable to clash with general principles derived from the rule of law.