COVID-19, European law and the geo-policy of aids: the incomplete structures of European development planning

The explosion of the Covid-19 and the subsequent economic crisis are posing un- precedented challenges to the models and mechanisms of European economic integration. One of these challenges concerns the reshaping of the functional connections between state aid rules and cohesion policies, under the background of a more comprehensive and coordinated approach to European development planning, as promoted by the Eu institutions and, in particular, by the European Commission. Among the several measures taken by the European Union to tackle the post-Covid economic crisis, there are specific regulatory and interpretative interventions meant to modify the standards for the admissibility of aids as well as to establish original instruments to finance the recovery strategies. The coordination between the two policy areas implies the assessment of several related issues, spacing from the role played by general principles such as that of cohesion, to the establishment of standards for the evaluation of disbursed aids in light of Eu policy goals, to the enactment of a European « industrial policy » meant to protect, through regulation of aids and foreign investments, strategic assets of the Union’s economy. The creation of an integrated set of rules fit for such purposes, however, must take into account the constant tension between two institutional context: on the one hand, that of a stronger regulatory role for the Commission, exercised through soft law guidelines and interpretative documents as well as through the coordination of the implementation of cohesion policy funds. On the other hand, that of the inter-governmental negotiation where the emergence of conflicting national strategies and the imbalance in the political and economic power of different Member States may effectively eclipse the significance of common development strategies as well as the action of the Commission. The present paper is meant to assess how legal rules governing the post-Covid recovery may affect hierarchies and balances in the evolution of the « geo-policy » of aids (be they national, European or foreign) within the European economic space. In doing so, it will consider both the institutional context and the substantive rules constituting the core of the measures for the recovery, trying, as a conclusion, to determine whether or not the Covid crisis favoured the consolidation or the emergence of new legal approaches to economic governance in Europe.