Seminar: The turn to state activism in EU law and policy [11 August 2026]

As in most advanced economies, the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was marked by a renewed embrace of industrial policy and of many policy instruments associated with state activism. This resurgence of state activism took on distinctive features. First, most activist policies were implemented at the national level, with the Union playing primarily an enabling role. Second, this revival occurred within a constitutional framework traditionally sceptical of state intervention resulting in a critical tension. On the one hand, EU-enabled activism presented, at least in principle, a normatively appealing mode of governance consistent with the EU polycentric and democratic character. On the other hand, the outdated treaty restrictions favoured an asymmetric form of state intervention in which activist tool remain available primarily to Member States with substantial fiscal capacity, thereby threatening both territorial cohesion and the integrity of the single market.

Marco Dani is Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento. He was an Emile Noël Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law and Justice of the NYU School of Law (2004-2005) and a Marie Curie Fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science (2009-2010). His research lies at the intersection of comparative constitutional law, European Union law, and political economy. He is the author of two monographs (Il diritto pubblico europeo nella prospettiva dei conflitti (Cedam, 2013) and La banca centrale nel diritto pubblico europeo. Una prospettiva teorica e comparata (FrancoAngeli, 2024)) as well as numerous articles published in leading Italian and European law journals. A full list of his publications is available at: https://webapps.unitn.it/du/it/Persona/PER0003491/Pubblicazioni.

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