The New European Economic Constitution

2026-07-22

For decades, the legal regulation of the EU internal market prioritised abolishing national trade barriers and ensuring free competition. These two objectives were central to what scholars have often called the EU’s “economic constitution”. Today, the EU’s economic constitution is radically changing, caused by challenges including climate change and the green transition, geopolitics and strategic autonomy, and the need to ensure fair social and taxation policy. Moreover, the 2024 Letta and Draghi reports called for a complete overhaul of Europe’s economic policy in order to augment the EU’s global competitiveness. These challenges call for a transformative redesign of EU internal market law and competition law. The central objectives of the Jean Monnet Chair on “The New European Economic Constitution” (NEWEEC) are to generate knowledge on the reshaping of the EU’s economic constitution, to train new generations of Law students to actively contribute to these legal transformations, and to disseminate knowledge about Europe’s economic constitution beyond the classroom and the academic community. NEWEEC re-designs LLB and LLM courses on EU internal market law and EU competition law, so as to coherently incorporate the reshaping of EU economic law in the curriculum. LLM students write programmatic proposals for legislative or policy change, which are published on the NEWEEC Blog after thorough peer-review. Within the new and unique “Advanced EU Law Clinic” module, they also advise real-life clients on current challenges in EU economic law. NEWEEC also produces cutting-edge scientific research. Three workshops bring together scholars and policy-makers working on the core challenges of EU economic law, resulting in an open-access book on Europe’s new economic constitution. In addition, NEWEEC sets up a Public Lecture Series, in which prominent scholars and policy-makers deliver open lectures on today’s challenges to EU internal market law and EU competition law.

Netherlands

2025-10-15