Legal Foundations of EU Economic Security: Shaping the Imaginable

3.1 Economic security through market harmonisation

The harmonisation of national laws under Article 114 TFEU is one of the central legal provisions to the establishment and functioning of the EU internal market. It enables the Union to adopt measures that reduce regulatory divergence among Member States, particularly where such differences risk obstructing fundamental freedoms.⁶² Originally aimed at facilitating the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital, its scope has broadened over time to govern the conditions under which goods and services are placed on the EU market, notably through sector-specific legislation.⁶³ The European Court of Justice has emphasised that Article 114 TFEU cannot serve as a general regulatory power but must genuinely pursue the objective of improving the internal market’s functioning, rather than merely listing it as an objective.⁶⁴

Over time, however, the use of Article 114 TFEU has extended beyond traditional market integration goals, often spilling over into other policy fields such as environmental protection, public health and digital regulation. This expansion has raised concerns about a creeping enlargement of EU competences, particularly in areas where the Treaties set limits on harmonisation.⁶⁵ Because Article 114 TFEU does not itself impose such constraints, it has occasionally been used to pursue broader policy objectives under the guise of market integration.⁶⁶ More recently, this tendency has been at the heart of ongoing debates over the legal basis of legislation like the Digital Markets Act, where the internal market rationale overlaps with broader and more ambitious regulatory aims.⁶⁷ A debate that could well continue in the area of economic security legislation, as argued below.

Both the promote and the protect pillar make frequent use of Article 114 TFEU, which is unsurprising given its role as the primary legal basis for internal market harmonisation and its foundational status in European integration.⁶⁸ A total of eight legislative measures rely on this provision, either exclusively or in combination with others. While these measures serve a variety of purposes, they are underpinned by different logics: some pursue traditional harmonisation by removing regulatory barriers and aligning national rules, while others adopt a more instrumental approach, edging toward the contours of a nascent industrial policy discussed in the next section. In this section I argue that while Article 114 TFEU continues to underpin conventional harmonisation efforts, it is increasingly being used to pursue strategic economic objectives, blurring the line between market integration and industrial policy.

The traditional harmonisation category is exemplified by the Single Market Emergency Instrument, now renamed the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act (IMERA).⁶⁹ This legislative framework aims to enhance the EU’s capacity to respond to future crises and ensure the continued functioning of the single market under stress.⁷⁰ It does so by improving transparency, information exchange and coordination among Member States and with the European level.⁷¹ Through an advisory board the IMERA equips the Commission with tools to request critical data from firms, recommend production of essential goods and coordinate procurement of crisis-relevant supplies.⁷² It also permits temporary adjustments to standards, conformity assessments and market surveillance procedures to expedite the availability of crucial products. Most notably, through an Council implementing act,⁷³ the IMERA equips the supranational level with the power to guide national measures that could fragment the internal market during emergencies thereby mandating a more harmonised response.⁷⁴

Article 114 TFEU is also used to align regulatory frameworks for critical infrastructures – both physical and digital.⁷⁵ This is reflected in the Directive on the Resilience of Critical Entities (CER), the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and the NIS2 Directive. The CER seeks to safeguard the continuous delivery of essential services by enhancing the operational and physical resilience of key infrastructure operators.⁷⁶ The CRA imposes horizontal cybersecurity obligations on all products with digital elements, from hardware to standalone software, to foster a unified framework for secure design and oversight.⁷⁷ NIS2, meanwhile, extends cybersecurity requirements to a broad array of sectors, including digital infrastructure, manufacturing, space and public administration, mandating risk management, incident reporting and reinforced cooperation among EU states.⁷⁸

While grounded in economic security imperatives, these instruments function above all as harmonising tools. They align national rules and compliance obligations, thereby reducing fragmentation and providing legal clarity for cross-border economic activity. The harmonisation of cybersecurity and infrastructure standards ensures a more predictable regulatory environment, creating a level playing field across the Union. In this way, the CER, CRA and NIS2 contribute not only to resilience and security, but also to the integrity and operability of the internal market itself. This approach is closely aligned with the EU’s long-established use of internal market law to regulate product and safety standards – now extended to the harmonisation of standards to enhance the economic security of critical sectors.

By contrast, other instruments based on Article 114 TFEU expose the structural limitations of market harmonisation as a regulatory approach for economic security. The CRMA is a case in point.⁷⁹ It establishes a comprehensive EU-level framework to ensure secure and sustainable access to materials vital for the green and digital transitions, such as lithium, rare earth elements and cobalt.⁸⁰ The CRMA sets ambitious benchmarks: by 2030, the EU aims to extract at least 10%, process 40% and recycle 25% of its annual consumption of strategic raw materials, while limiting dependence on any single third country to a maximum of 65%.⁸¹ To achieve these goals, the CRMA introduces ‘Strategic Projects’ that benefit from accelerated permitting, legal prioritisation and better access to finance.⁸² It also mandates national exploration programmes and creates a European Critical Raw Materials Board to oversee implementation.⁸³

The NZIA, adopted under the European Green Deal Industrial Plan, follows a similar logic.⁸⁴ It seeks to ramp up domestic production of key clean technologies – including solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and heat pumps – to meet 40% of the EU’s annual deployment needs and gain a 15% global market share by 2030.⁸⁵ Key features include fast-tracked permitting, the designation of ‘Net-Zero Acceleration Valleys’⁸⁶ and incentives to incorporate non-price criteria in procurement and energy auctions.⁸⁷ However, unlike traditional industrial policy instruments, the NZIA lacks direct EU-level financial support. Its implementation depends heavily on Member State initiatives, leading to variability in outcomes and limited strategic coherence across the Union.

Despite their ambitious goals, both the CRMA and the NZIA underscore the tension between harmonisation-based legislation and the fiscal realities of industrial policy. While both acts include provisions aimed at coordinating and facilitating access to finance (ie, Article 16 of the CRMA and Article 19 of the NZIA), these mechanisms stop short of establishing dedicated EU-level funding streams. Instead, they rely on a patchwork of existing resources, including private capital, Member State programmes, European Investment Bank instruments and various Union initiatives such as the Global Gateway. These coordination efforts, while valuable, highlight the structural limits of relying on Article 114 TFEU: a legal basis designed to align national rules, not to mobilise public investment. The harmonisation it enables is necessary to reduce regulatory barriers and create a common framework, but it is only a first, although vital, step toward achieving the broader economic and strategic objectives set out in these acts.

In this light, the CRMA and NZIA illustrate a shift from market-neutral regulation to market-instrumental governance.⁸⁸ Harmonisation is no longer used merely to eliminate trade barriers but to engineer specific economic outcomes, such as securing supply chains or fostering domestic manufacturing capacity. Although grounded in Article 114 TFEU, this approach signals a broader doctrinal evolution. The internal market is increasingly seen as a tool to bolster economic resilience against geopolitical risks, rather than an end in itself.

As several commentators have noted, these developments reflect a paradigmatic shift in the purpose of market regulation.⁸⁹ The underlying assumption is no longer that markets are self-sufficient mechanisms for prosperity. Instead, they are reframed as instruments to serve public policy aims, and increasingly those that are related to economic security. The CRMA’s choice of Article 114 TFEU is instructive: it casts raw material access not as a security exceptionalism, but as an issue of market integration, thereby enabling EU action through existing competences. By doing so, the strategy is consistent with a broader pattern of using established treaty bases to deliver on evolving policy priorities.⁹⁰

Yet the NZIA simultaneously highlights the limits of this approach. In responding to external challenges, particularly the US Inflation Reduction Act and China’s state-led investments, the Regulation is positioned within the EU’s broader Economic Security Strategy.⁹¹ But its practical tools fall short of a coordinated EU industrial policy, as it does not establish public production capacity nor mandate a Union-wide investment strategy.⁹² Instead, it nudges Member States to adapt procurement and planning frameworks in ways that may benefit EU-based firms.⁹³ This underscores the legal and institutional constraints of relying solely on Article 114 TFEU, which was never designed for strategic industrial planning.⁹⁴

In sum, the repeated use of Article 114 TFEU in the EU’s Economic Security Strategy confirms its continuing utility as a vehicle for market integration. It remains one of the most versatile and robust provisions in EU law, helping to eliminate regulatory fragmentation, uphold legal certainty and facilitate cross-border economic activity. The problem, however, does not seem to lie in the use of Article 114 TFEU per se, but in the widening gap between its legal scope and the growing ambitions attached to it. As regulatory instruments take on more explicitly strategic or industrial objectives, the limitations of relying solely on market harmonisation-based rationales become increasingly apparent.⁹⁵

Indeed, while harmonisation can provide the regulatory scaffolding for industrial competitiveness, it is not a substitute for industrial policy. Without adequate funding mechanisms and a cohesive strategic vision, Article 114 TFEU risks being overextended. This is particularly problematic in sectors like green technology, where other global actors are investing heavily in state-led industrial policy.⁹⁶ In contrast, the EU’s reliance on market integration reflects not just legal ingenuity, but a more profound institutional shortfall: the absence of a more comprehensive industrial policy competence. This brings me to the next section, which examines the EU’s emerging industrial policy architecture under Article 173 TFEU.

3.2 The EU’s emerging industrial policy

As discussed above, the EU has, in recent years, increasingly embraced interventionist policies in response to the twin challenges of the green and digital transitions, as well as the growing use of global economic interdependencies as geopolitical leverage. This shift has sparked a new interest in industrial policy at the EU level. In March 2020, the European Commission launched its EU Industrial Strategy,⁹⁷ which was updated in 2021 considering the Covid-19 pandemic to address mounting concerns about the Single Market’s resilience to external shocks.⁹⁸ This industrial strategy also forms a core part of the promote pillar of the Economic Security Strategy.⁹⁹

The fact that industrial policy was a relatively dormant pillar of the EU economic constitution until recently is rooted in the history of European integration. The 1951 Treaty of Paris on the European Community of Steel and Coal (ECSC) already equipped the High Authority with the power to control national state aid policies and other extensive financial and fiscal powers in the coal and steel sectors.¹⁰⁰ However, these far-reaching industrial policy powers were not carried over into the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958.¹⁰¹ Instead, the sectoral focus gave way to the broader objective of creating a comprehensive internal market.

Rather than developing a joint industrial policy, the EU pursued economic integration primarily through negative integration.¹⁰² Initially, integration focused on harmonising existing national regulatory frameworks, but increasingly it involved the creation of new rules at the EU level, shifting not just the application, but also the initiation of regulatory measures to the supranational sphere, particularly in the area of the internal market.¹⁰³ Absent a clear objective for a common industrial policy, this meant that this area was most influenced by the common state aid provisions, and more specifically, the general prohibition thereof as enshrined by Article 107(3)(b) TFEU. This EU-wide state aid framework served both as a complement to the evolving EU competition law regime, supporting the vision of a well-functioning internal market, and as a safeguard against distortions that could arise from unequal state support.¹⁰⁴ Without such control, Member States with greater fiscal capacity would have gained an unfair advantage by disproportionately supporting their domestic industries within the liberalised internal market.¹⁰⁵

It was not until the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993 that a dedicated legal basis for an EU industrial policy was introduced.¹⁰⁶ Although the addition of these competences under Articles 6(b) and 173 TFEU marked a novelty, it was still reflective of the original political compromise among Member States, which resisted a centrally coordinated industrial policy in favour of maintaining national control. The EU’s industrial competence remains relatively weak due to both the limited scope and the restrictive design of Article 173 TFEU. Rather than granting the Union strong legislative powers to shape or direct national industrial policies, the provision confines the EU to supporting and coordinating measures, explicitly excluding harmonisation.

Whether caused by these design limitations or other factors, these acquired industrial policy competence were not used extensively during the early years of their existence,¹⁰⁷ and were therefore largely disregarded by the discourse or deemed irrelevant altogether.¹⁰⁸ The EU’s Economic Security Strategy, however, signals a revival of this long-overlooked aspect of EU competence. While the established cornerstones of integration (ie, based on Article 114 TFEU) suited an EU focused on removing barriers to economic integration, they seem at times less fit for the emerging pursuit of a more interventionist industrial policy aimed at enhancing strategic autonomy, sovereignty and economic security – as the discussion in the previous section demonstrated.

The interplay between EU law and domestic policy intervention thus reveals a structural tension. While harmonisation under EU law has traditionally limited the scope of national industrial policies, the complementary provisions specifically addressing industrial policy remain comparatively weak, explicitly excluding harmonisation in the strict sense. As a result, the legal framework acts as a constraint on industrial action – not an absolute prohibition, but one that meaningfully narrows the range of possibilities. Yet, this very tension has also spurred adaptation within the EU’s legal architecture. Driven by political necessity, several legislative acts and proposals have been adopted to strengthen the industrial policy dimension of this agenda.¹⁰⁹

The example of the Chips Act illustrates this point.¹¹⁰ It aims to foster innovation through the Chips for Europe Initiative, supporting investment in manufacturing to enhance supply security, and establishing a European Semiconductor Board to coordinate efforts and manage shortages, backed by a total investment of €43 billion.¹¹¹ The Chips Act was adopted in view of the vital role that semiconductors play for the digital and green economy, and their foundational importance in underpinning key sectors of strategic importance, such as automation and defence.¹¹² Acknowledging that the countries of the EU had fallen behind global competitors in semiconductor development and production, the Chips Act makes an attempt to address these shortcomings by developing a sector-specific industrial policy. Adopted in September 2023, it is based on Articles 173(3) and 114 TFEU, meaning that it builds on the corresponding legal bases of the auxiliary competence for industrial policy, as well as the already discussed central treaty provision for the approximation of national laws.

In addition to relying on funds provided by the Digital Europe and Horizon Europe programmes, implemented through the renamed Chips Joint Undertaking, the Chips Act incentivises private investment, attracted by means of public support. Although the Member States may offer public support to such facilities, ‘without prejudice’¹¹³ to the EU’s State aid rules, certain tensions arise. Irrespective of the assertion that this support is not to be interpreted as a restriction of state aid law, the determination of such aid as being in the public interest seems to pursue precisely this purpose.¹¹⁴ This reading is supported by both the fact that the ‘first-of-a-kind’ requirement for subsidies is framed broadly and by the reference to Important Project of Common European Interest, an exception to the general prohibition of state aid as enshrined by Article 107(3)(b) TFEU.

While this constitutes an easing of restrictions on national funding and state aid for the semiconductor industry, this does not, on its own, constitute nor replace a comprehensive and independently funded EU industrial policy. Such a relaxation might enable Member States with deep pockets to attract investment into the semiconductor industry but comes at the cost of serious distortions of the EU’s internal market, ie, by engaging in costly subsidy races among one another. This may further result in geographic asymmetries within the single market. In addition to relying largely on reallocated funding, the Chips Act gives Member States a central role in the new European Semiconductor Board, inviting political bargaining over fund distribution.¹¹⁵

Significantly changing this would require the transfer of more new powers, such as budgetary competences through the creation of own resources,¹¹⁶ or by rooting a more robust legal basis in the framework of the Treaties – one that foresees a more dominant role for the supranational level.¹¹⁷ For the time being, the EU’s industrial policy competence under Article 173 TFEU remains relatively weak, although it can, in some cases, restrict the space available for national legislation.¹¹⁸ As a result, industrial policy relies on internal market provisions like Article 114 TFEU to support substantive EU action. Because of these limitations, the mix of strategic forbearance in enforcing state aid law, combined with the reallocation of some substantial funding, still falls short of equipping the Union with the instruments needed to pursue an industrial policy comparable to that of a nation-state.¹¹⁹ Consequently, it cannot transform the EU into a heavy weight in semiconductor manufacturing overnight.

The argument is not that an industrial policy capable of meeting today’s challenges is impossible under the current framework. Rather, the law shapes and limits what is imaginable in terms of industrial policy, operating as a constraint when compared to other areas that rely on stronger and more established legal competences.¹²⁰ Historically, this challenge has frequently arisen when new responsibilities were to be exercised under the existing body of EU law, and the discussion of how to align the law better with the emerging geopolitical objectives is already gaining speed.¹²¹

Further, this does not preclude that such an embryo of an EU industrial policy may not bear fruits one day. In fact, a certain pattern of initially incomplete policy solutions became apparent over the diverse crises the EU faced during the past two decades. These included the Eurozone crisis and the migration crisis, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, European integration through crisis emerged as one of the better understood evolutionary paths of the EU.¹²² Described in brief, these crises initially prompted incomplete legal innovations, driven by the inherent necessity created by the crisis itself.¹²³ In the medium to long term, these developments have – despite initially being incomplete – nevertheless served as the nucleus for further, more complete integration within the specific policy domains. These patters are referred to as ‘integration by stealth’¹²⁴ or as ‘spillovers’¹²⁵ by neo-functionalist theories of European integration.

Reflecting on the role of law in the industrial policy dimension of EU economic security, the structural impact of recent economic activism in the field of industrial policy may deepen integration in the medium to long term. For now, however, the lack of more comprehensive supranational powers means that the industrial policy dimension of the Economic Security Strategy must rely on the EU legal framework’s capacity for innovation, rather than benefiting from more established procedural tools to advance its economic security objectives. While this certainly does not entirely stall the industrial policy agenda, this part of the strategy requires a more burdensome bargaining process owed to the lesser degree of integration in this area. While the fundamental logic of law as both the object and the agent of European integration remains intact, the current focus on mobilising law as an agent of change to establish an industrial policy seems to absorb much of the available political capital.¹²⁶ As a result, the actual objective of developing a robust industrial policy to underpin the economic security paradigm – the law as an object – remains comparatively underachieved.

3.3 The EU’s external economic authority

As in other areas, the EU’s external economic relations law under Article 207 TFEU has supported a series of legislative innovations in recent years. Many of these developments have been driven by what has been identified as an ‘unilateral turn’¹²⁷ in the EU’s trade policy. The Economic Security Strategy further reflects this unilateral turn, in calling for a ‘rigorous use of Trade Defence Instruments to address such unfair practices and policies’,¹²⁸ emphasising the need for deterrence through the relatively recently adopted ACI,¹²⁹ underlining the importance of inbound (and potentially outbound) Foreign Direct Investment Screening¹³⁰ as well as improving coordination on EU export control rules.¹³¹

Unlike industrial policy, the EU’s conferred competences in trade and investment are strongly institutionalised under the CCP. Already in the early days of the ECSC, the blueprint for such a common policy arose out of a functional necessity: the establishment of a common market for coal and steel necessitated the harmonisation of external tariffs on these goods.¹³² Following the same functional rationale as the ECSC, the Treaty of Rome entrusted the newly established EEC in 1958 with the responsibility of developing a CCP.¹³³ Initially focused on tariffs, this authority gradually expanded, following a transitional period, to encompass broader aspects of trade.¹³⁴ This transfer of sovereignty to the supranational level, rooted in the need for an external policy aligned with internal harmonisation, remains in effect to this day. Article 3(1) TFEU stipulates that the CCP falls under the exclusive competence of the Union, meaning that only the EU may legislate and adopt legally binding acts under Article 207 TFEU.

As was the case for the provisions governing the internal market, the exact scope of the CCP remained contested and developed over the history of European integration. Landmark cases and opinions by the Court of Justice established legal doctrines that defined and, in some cases, expanded the exact scope of the CCP. This meant that the exclusive competences were gradually extended through the jurisprudence of the Court. The integration through law trajectory inter alia established the broad scope of the CCP in international commodity trade,¹³⁵ exclusive competence for trade in goods,¹³⁶ a shared competence for trade in services,¹³⁷ exclusive competence for issues covered by the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights¹³⁸ and the exclusive competence for sustainable development provisions in free trade agreements.¹³⁹

The development of the CCP was thus closely tied to the broader integration process driven by the internal market and was progressively codified through successive amendments to the Treaties, reflecting its expanding mandate and the political circumstances at the time. The Single European Act (1986) strengthened the EEC’s ability to leverage its economic clout by introducing qualified majority voting and broadening the CCP’s scope through the doctrine of implied external competence.¹⁴⁰ Although the subsequent Treaty reforms of Maastricht (1992), Amsterdam (1997) and Nice (2001) introduced only incremental rather than substantive changes to the CCP, the broader expansion of international trade following the decline of European communism laid the foundations for the EU’s current policy.¹⁴¹

Building on the momentum of the Uruguay Round negotiations (1986–1993), the establishment of the WTO in 1995 institutionalised a comprehensive framework for global trade governance. For the first time, multilateral trade rules extended significantly beyond tariff reductions to cover areas such as services (through the General Agreement on Trade in Services, GATS), intellectual property rights (through the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS), technical barriers to trade and government procurement.¹⁴² The WTO also introduced a binding dispute settlement mechanism, ensuring more consistent enforcement of international trade commitments.¹⁴³ These developments shaped the liberal orientation of the CCP as codified in the Treaty of Lisbon.¹⁴⁴ In addition, the changes to the EU’s mandate conferred competence over a broader range of ‘deep’ trade measures extending beyond at-the-border measures,¹⁴⁵ although the precise scope of this competence was frequently subject to debate.¹⁴⁶

What implications does this have for the role of legal competences in the emerging economic security paradigm? Both procedurally and substantively, a strong and well-established legal foundation exists to advance the trade dimension of the strategy. Procedurally, the CCP mirrors the integration and harmonisation of the internal market: as an exclusive competence of the Union – unlike the CFSP – it is subject to the ordinary legislative procedure, thereby significantly limiting the role of Member States in shaping policy.¹⁴⁷ Substantively, the growing importance of international trade relations throughout the EU’s evolution, first under the GATT framework and later within the institutional structure of the WTO, has resulted in the CCP acquiring an increasingly broad and comprehensive scope.¹⁴⁸

The example of the ACI demonstrates how the dual role of law can have concrete implications for the practice of economic security within the EU. Grounded in Article 207(2) TFEU, the instrument outlines a range of economic sanctions designed to address instances of economic coercion that threaten to interfere with the sovereign choices of the EU or its Member States.¹⁴⁹ As the mentioning of the instrument in the EU’s Economic Security Strategy makes clear, there is a strong security component to the instrument. Just like economic sanctions under the EU’s CFSP competence (referred to as restrictive measures), the ACI serves security objectives by using economic tools. The frequently cited Lithuania example, under the impression of which the instrument was finally adopted, further underscores this point. In brief, the Lithuania saga unfolded as follows: the country permitted Taiwan to open a representative office, leading China to unilaterally suspend customs clearance for Lithuanian goods and pressure multinationals doing business in China to cease operations in the country.¹⁵⁰ Although trade with China amounted to less than 1% of total Lithuanian exports, it underscored how economic instruments can constrain the ability to make independent policy choices, reflecting a deeper strategic context that goes beyond mere trade concerns.¹⁵¹

Despite being located at the intersection of trade and security, the ACI – thanks to its CCP legal basis – emerged from a different starting point when compared to the Chips Act. The range of potential countermeasures listed under Annex I of the ACI fully leverages the EU’s trade competence, encompassing areas such as restricting the provision of services and protecting intellectual property rights.¹⁵² In turn, such a range of counter measures is only possible because of the historically comprehensive material scope of the CCP. Procedurally, the ACI benefits, unlike CFSP sanctions, from the fact that the determination of economic coercion is made by a Council implementing act,¹⁵³ and adopted by a qualified majority of the Member States, while the selection of response measures is carried out through a Commission implementing act that can only be blocked by a qualified majority of the Member States.¹⁵⁴

Although the procedural elements of the ACI underwent changes during the political negotiations – reflecting the Member States’ desire to retain greater control over a trade instrument so closely linked to economic security – the outcome points to a parallel, yet opposite, trend when compared to the industrial policy dimension of economic security.¹⁵⁵ In the case of the Chips Act, ambitions were constrained from the beginning: rather than establishing a strong common industrial policy framework, it largely resulted in a reallocation of funding controlled by Member States, leaving it vulnerable to national interests and heavily reliant on the relaxation of state aid rules rather than a clear supranational vision. By contrast, the ACI began with both a broad material scope and an ambitious supranational decision-making structure. Although not immune to politically driven changes, the initial Commission proposal defined a different starting point.¹⁵⁶ Of course, this does not mean that any legislative instrument adopted under Article 207 TFEU is necessarily a breakthrough but rather that a more assertive stance appears prima facie more likely.¹⁵⁷

In fact, whether the ACI is really a trade ‘bazooka’¹⁵⁸ – a term increasingly used to describe the instrument, which still employs features of the EU’s more cautious, intergovernmental CFSP approach – depends on the framing.¹⁵⁹ Is it a bazooka compared to the historically more cautious EU approach, or is it a bazooka compared to the trade and economic security practices of other nation states?¹⁶⁰ There is a difference between both, and any judgement on the matter enters the realm of statecraft and regulatory design. Ultimately, it raises the deeper question of the purpose of economic security – and the means by which it may rightfully be pursued.¹⁶¹ The mere finding that, despite the sui generis nature of the EU,¹⁶² the trade powers of the bloc still allow for a valid analogy to other states, speaks to the relative strength of it.¹⁶³

In this sense, legislative measures adopted under Article 207 TFEU better support the Economic Security Strategy’s aspiration to become more than the sum of 27 national efforts – a genuinely supranational EU approach to economic security. Owing to the longstanding integration history in this area, the law is no longer primarily needed as an integrative force or as a means of authorising an initially incomplete policy solution, since significant competence gaps at the European level are absent under the CCP. Therefore, a more functional understanding of its role becomes possible in this area, where the EU possesses state-like powers.