The De Jure “Brussels Effect”: Current Legal Trends in the EU’s Unilateral Regulatory Globalisation

Anu Bradford employed the term “Brussels effect” to discuss the European Union’s ability to shape regulations and standards in the global marketplace through the EU’s own unilateral regulatory action. That theory has been built around the notion that while the EU exercises its regulatory powers not to actively shape legislative frameworks outside its borders but mainly to establish and enforce standards for its own internal market, third country businesses, for various reasons, follow suit and, moreover, eventually the EU policies spill over to third countries themselves. However, several legislative developments and trends in recent years point to, beyond mere internal market regulation, the EU’s more activist approach and a more ambitious agenda to impose its own policies and rules on foreign companies or even indirectly on third countries. Therefore, it is argued that the so-called “Brussels effect” extends more and more outside the EU, seeking to affect the behaviour of third country businesses, as well as the choices and policies of third countries, where the EU considers this necessary in order to also pursue the EU’s own global goals, such as protection of human rights, the management of climate change, combating the degradation of environment, mitigating the subsidisation of enterprises by states, or regulating AI. In that respect, a claim will be tested in the article which states that the internal regulation of the EU’s own market, once the primary goal of the EU regulatory agenda, has greatly decreased in importance or has even become secondary; it is now the promotion of European values, the protection of EU businesses (also against the competitive disadvantages they suffer due to the EU’s internal market rules) and the will to progress towards certain desired public effects at the global level that are mainly driving the most recent and most impactful EU regulations.