ECIPE Seminar: Defining the Brussels Effect and its Implications for the EU and others

The Brussels Effect was first defined in a 2012 article by Professor Anu Bradford as “the unprecedented and deeply underestimated global power that the European Union is exercising through its legal institutions and standards, and how it successfully exports that influence to the rest of the world.” She has continued researching the subject since then, and her new book provides evidence across numerous sectors of the economy. The EU is now routinely considered to be a regulatory superpower, a concept that influences debate in Brussels, but also more widely such as in the UK.

The book presents a new account of economic globalisation and the race to the top for global regulatory standards, reveals the EU’s unique power to influence global corporations and set the rules of the game while acting alone, covers the EU’s global influence across diverse policy areas from data privacy and consumer safety to environmental protection and competition rules, and explains why Brexit will liberate the UK from the EU’s regulatory reach. In this event Anu Bradford will discuss her work with Alan Beattie, European leader writer for the FT, who has frequently cited the Brussels Effect in his writing.

They will consider questions including:

• The nature of the Brussels Effect, its effects and limitations
• The implications of the Brussels Effect for EU policy-makers, Member States, and countries outside the EU such as the UK
• Whether global economic developments, for example in the USA and China, could threaten the Brussels Effect in the future