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The EU’s anti coercion instrument between EU strategic autonomy and member state sovereignty
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1725-6739
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EUI; LAW; Working Paper; 2023/08
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SCHAUPP, Lukas Sebastian, The EU’s anti coercion instrument between EU strategic autonomy and member state sovereignty, EUI, LAW, Working Paper, 2023/08 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76168
Abstract
The article reviews the dynamics that shaped the EU’s novel Anti-Coercion Instrument in the context of the Union’s aspirations for greater strategic autonomy. During the negotiations of the instrument, intended to deter and counteract economic coercion by third countries, tensions arose over the question of the appropriate level of supranationalization of competence for an instrument situated at the crossroads of the Union’s trade and foreign policy. This article sheds light on the compromise that conciliated the diverging positions of the European Parliament and the Commission on the one, and the Council and the Member States on the other side. To this end, it conducts a legal analysis of the most contested points during the legislative process. This includes the question of who gets to determine the existence of economic coercion as well as the range of potential countermeasures. It finds that although it was undisputedly based on the Common Commercial Policy of the EU, the Member States, aware of the significant proximity to foreign policy issues, negotiated significant intergovernmental involvement into the instrument. The article puts forth the argument that this was not the result of legal necessity, but of deliberate political choice. The Regulation displays an inherent tension between EU strategic autonomy and Member State sovereignty, as the analysis of the legal, institutional, and political dimension of the different negotiation positions regarding the new regulation show. The conclusion emphasizes the necessity for a political compromise, in which the degree to which the EU should assume an enhanced geopolitical role is settled. Such a compromise could prevent future legal instruments from being shaped primarily by institutional balance considerations rather than their functionality in view to the Union’s external environment.