FIFA and UEFA hold the monopoly in organizing professional football competitions in Europe. On the other hand, the European Super League Company was established on the initiative of a group of professional football clubs, with the intention to create a new international professional football competition project known as the “Super League”, outside of the framework of FIFA and UEFA. The response on behalf of the FIFA and UEFA and the threating for sanctions to clubs and players that will participate in the Super League, led to judicial remedies. In that respect, in the decision C-333/21, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had the opportunity to review FIFA’s and UEFA’s regulations as to their compliance with EU competition law. The aim of this presentation is to highlight the main parts of the Court’s decision and highlight its importance for the future of football in Europe.

This study explores the emotionality of EU-Türkiye relations, with a focus on the discursive expression of emotions in the rhetoric of Brussels and Ankara, examining how emotional narratives reveal the dynamics of cooperation and competition between the EU and Türkiye. Concentrating on the period from 2011 to 2024—a phase characterised by stagnation and heightened tensions in EU-Türkiye relations —this research investigates how Ankara’s perception of the EU and the EU’s perception of Türkiye are emotionally constructed, and how these emotional framings legitimise political actions and strategies.

Adopting a social constructivist framework, the study draws on the sociology of emotions (Ahmed, 2004) to analyse the roles of emotions such as resentment, humiliation, anger, and disgust in shaping Türkiye’s stance toward the EU and vice versa. Using Emotion Discourse Analysis (EDA), the research systematically examines Erdoğan’s speeches and the European Commission discourses regarding Türkiye to uncover the emotional narratives underpinning EU-Türkiye relations. These narratives are analysed to illustrate how they reflect and reinforce patterns of cooperation and/or competition between the parts.

The findings illuminate the ways in which emotional expressions shape national and collective identities, fostering sentiments of exclusion, resistance, and defiance in response to perceived EU hegemony. This analysis reveals the pivotal role of emotions in influencing public perceptions and informing political strategies, offering a nuanced perspective on EU-Türkiye relations that transcends traditional power-politics frameworks.

Finally, this research contributes to the growing body of literature on the role of emotions in international relations by providing a novel analytical lens for understanding the interplay between identity, power, and emotion in the EU-Türkiye context. It also underscores the importance of incorporating emotion-focused methodologies into foreign policy analysis, enriching debates on the multifaceted nature of global political dynamics.

While industrial policy has formally remained a Member State competence, several EU competencies limit its exercise by imposing positive or negative rules. State aid rules are considered the most stringent straitjacket on Member State’s autonomy to support undertakings. EU industrial policy is mainly based on recognizing free market forces, where intervention should be limited to correct market failures. State aid rules and the European Commission, exercising its exclusive competence to decide on the compatibility of draft aid, are viewed as limiting the discretion of Member State’s on how and when to intervene in the economy. For a long time, the EU industrial policy has struggled to add value to Member State’s industrial policies, but since the mid-2010s, the EU industrial policy has become more pronounced. The COVID-19 crisis and, later, the energy crisis called for a more interventionist approach and enhancing the EU’s strategic autonomy.

After warning that the European economy is at a remarkable cross-roads, the European Commission highlighted the need for economic recovery from a deep crisis, the green and digital transitions, its future competitiveness, and open strategic autonomy globally in key strategic areas such as batteries, semiconductors, cloud and edge computing, scaling up financing large-scale research and infrastructure projects, where there is a need to combine public and private efforts.

Against this background, this desk research investigates the effect of the EU State Aid rule on national economic policy and how national policymakers can adjust their projects to fit into the EU State Aid law and policy framework to remain compliant.