From the mid-2010s, strategic autonomy appeared in the political and economic narrative of several EU policies. EU industrial policy is also linked to the capacity of the EU to improve its competitiveness, invest in human capital, and R&D, and address market failures. On the other hand, EU State aid rules have often been perceived as too stringent on Member States' competence to support national industries. The changing geopolitical and economic environment and later the COVID-19 triggered a more assertive EU to defend its market against third-country competitors and to tackle the vulnerability of sectors dependent on supply chains. Consequentially, the implementation of projects of common European interest has been accelerated.

The paper investigates 107(3) TFEU as a broad mandate to contribute to the strategic autonomy of the EU, which will reveal that the category of important projects of common European interest (IPCEI) is a tool to authorise pan-European R&D and industrial projects. These projects were steered by the Commission and the Member States together to achieve EU objectives, as set out in various EU policy documents (e.g. European Green Deal).

Desk research has been applied by analysing the relevant policy documents and Commission decisions to conduct our research. IPCEI, as a broad undefined TFEU exception, is, in our view, apt to accommodate diverse EU policy goals.

As a nation renowned for its internal intricacies, most of the policy-debates in Belgium converge to a continuous tug-of-war over competencies. Amidst this internal fragmentation, developing a coherent China strategy remains an elusive pursuit, permeated with hesitancy, ambiguity, and a severe lack of much-needed expertise and resources. Since Commission President Von der Leyen’s speech in March 2023, Belgian policymakers have become increasingly aware of the need to manage the risks within the persistently imbalanced Sino-Belgian relationship. In this regard, “de-risking” – induced by the security strategy at European level – is perceived as a viable alternative to a drastic “de-coupling” scenario. This stance particularly resonates with private economic interests and the country’s identity as an open economy, dependent on a free trading and investing environment. However, it seems that it is also this identity, in combination with the country’s structural and administrative discord, which impedes the translation of ambitious political discourse into a proactive and decisive de-risking policy vis-à-vis China.

This paper, by looking into the case of Belgium, will investigate the policy inertia that results from the current EU institutional architecture, characterized by fragmented and incomplete competence distribution. While for the application of the EU’s economic security strategy the Union must rely on its member states, subnational dynamics can hamper such a smooth implementation. On the other hand, as the European Commission discursively claims supranational vigor in the domain of economic security, the door is being opened to the abuse of the EU policy level as a lightning rod when policy at the national level is absent or dysfunctional. While refraining from generalizing this tendency in European China policy, the case of Belgium does reveal a significant and problematic disconnect between the economic security policies at national level and the EU’s ambitious economic security agenda.

The European Union (EU) is taking measures to expand its human rights and sustainability compliance policy, and one such effort is the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Besides more explicit goals, this instrument was created in hopes of positively impacting EU competition. Through human rights and sustainability, the Union is trying to further level the playing fields against potential races to the bottom that some member states could enact and distort internal competition. The directive also aims to impose standards on large companies from third countries that regularly operate in the EU market. Additionally, it aims to reinforce the EU's image as a global norms entrepreneur vis-a-vis other states and international institutions.

This paper aims to explore this novel normative area for the EU by road-mapping due diligence and its global impact. The first section will introduce the journey to find a common EU framework for sustainability and human rights due diligence, considering member states' different legal systems. The second section will present this dual-objective policy, highlighting its innovations and shortcomings. Finally, the third section will highlight if and how the EU's due diligence could impact global supply chains and broader EU aspirations. Through law and policy, this paper aims to enrich the literature and present this innovative policy to inquiry about aligning member states' legal systems, broader interests, and, more importantly, how due diligence could be pivotal for the EU's pursuit of strategic autonomy in supply chains by levelling the playing field.

The administrative function of strategic supervision is a manifestation of the Zeitgeist that informs the current global economic order. This changing order is characterised by the increasing re-politicisation of the economy, in contrast to the tendency promoted by the neo-liberal agenda and driven by the European integration process to disentangle politics and economics. Against this background, the contribution attempts to identify the legal proprium of strategic supervision for security reasons through a comparison with the regulatory function, expression of the theoretical paradigm of the Regulatory State long at the heart of the European economic constitution. The conceptualisation of an autonomous administrative function endowed with its own purposes, competences, attributions, and addressees preludes the analysis of the functional and normative implications of Europeanisation on strategic supervision, now exercised by domestic public powers within a Europeanised regulatory space.