30 January 2026
As the conference’s title evoked we live in a moment of profound uncertainty for the EU and EU regulation, linked to both external pressures - new geopolitical tensions, and new interdependencies, as illustrated by the ongoing Russian war of aggression against Ukraine as well as Trump’s tariffs - and to internal political and legal developments - including a push for simplification and deregulation (as regulation is increasingly seen as a drag on innovation), and the well-known attacks and rejections of liberal values, supranational institutions, and expertise which go under the heading of the backlash.
Uncertainty describes the present context faced by the EU. In turn, and this is a second observation that animated the conference, uncertainty evokes a style of EU regulation celebrated as capable of dealing with complex regulatory problems, by rejecting rigid hierarchical solutions, and embracing flexible rules implemented through the union transnational settings (what has been theorized as an experimentalist architecture for EU regulation and governance). Hence, uncertainty as a threat, but also uncertainty as a condition for governance innovations to emerge and flourish.
Our keynote by Professor Jonathan Zeitlin, Regulating Europe under Uncertainty: Integrating Conception and Execution through Recursive Joint Governance, started by observing that there is limited evidence that EU regulation stands in the way of innovation and competitiveness. To the contrary, in the face of heightened uncertainty and interdependencies, EU governance processes and regulatory arrangements have continued to evolve and produce innovations, by deepening their experimentalist features. As Zeitlin showed, through examples from several areas of EU regulation - from aviation safety to medicines, from competition to banking supervision – EU experimentalist arrangements achieved an increasingly closer integration between rulemaking (conception) and rule implementation (execution), through systems of recursive joint governance. In areas where the EU has not deployed experimentalist regulation, Zeitlin suggested, regulatory failures may have been more frequent, with negative impacts on innovation & competitivenes. You can watch our keynote speech here.
Our first thematic panel, Regulation and Governance in the Face of Uncertainty, has brought together scholars whose work interrogate the relationship between expertise, responsiveness, and politicization in EU regulation. As Yane Svetiev’s presentation pointed out by reference to examples from financial regulation, peer review mechanisms, (that allow regulators to compare each other’s solutions to similar problems) can be a way to deal with the uncertainty inherent in complex regulatory problems, not only by encouraging experimentation, but also by building trust. Takuya Onoda presented insights from research that problematizes one core assumption of scholarship on the regulatory state - that delegation to independent regulators reduces uncertainty and ensures policy stability by insulating regulators from politics. With examples from the regulation of pharmaceuticals he shows how high level of political insulation may end up producing more politicization: the regulatory state is inherently contested, and “uncertainty fundamentally unresolved”. Vincent Delhomme’s observations focused on the relationship between expertise, politics, and moral and cultural considerations in EU internal market law. As Delhomme observe, by reference to Tobacco regulation, in the face of complex regulatory problems, narratives based on best-available evidence often conflict with cultural or moral considerations, which calls for a larger role for politics in the EU regulation of lifestyle risk. You can watch our first panel here.
Our second panel, Varieties of Backlash to EU Regulation, brought together scholars whose work conceptualizes the backlash and different facets thereof. James Patterson’s presentation offered insight from his ERC-funded project on backlash to climate policy. As Patterson shows, backlash is not an unavoidable outcome in the face of ambitious and socially costly policy action; rather, it is a complex socio-political phenomenon, whose occurrence (or lack thereof) depends on local contextual conditions, as well as feature of the policy action. This awareness is important, Patterson notes, as it shows that ambitious climate policy without backlash is possible. Lola Avril drew on contemporary developments in EU law and policy, to point at the potential emergence of a EU de-regulatory state. Avril emphasizes the role of private interest and lobbying as drivers of the current push for deregulation in the EU, which she connects to growing opportunities for private participation in EU regulatory processes in previous decades. As the presentation suggests by way of questioning persistent myths on the EU regulatory state: more integration is compatible with de-regulation; law can deregulate; and open access to institutions does not mean balanced interest representation. Giacomo Tagiuri presented some insights from his upcoming ERC starting grant, the Governance of Loss in the EU. As he emphasized, the present backlash to EU institutions and liberal values is linked to experiences of loss in the face of rapid market transformation to which the EU is seen as contributing; hence, the importance of regulatory techniques and arrangements that can attend to the complexity of loss, in its multiple forms both material and immaterial. You can watch our second panel here.
Our third panel, Tech Power, Geopolitics, Democracy: the Transformation of EU competition Law and Market Regulation, offered a truly interdisciplinary conversation on a rapidly changing field. Chase Foster, a political scientist, presented evidence of the renewed policy salience (politicization) of antitrust and market regulation in both EU and US. Whether this politicization transforms enforcement practice is more ambiguous. But there are signs in this direction with a growth of enforcement signalling more structural concerns over market power, including tech power, as well as potential concerns for inequality (labour antitrust). As Foster suggests, politicization of antirust, if embedded in rule of law, can be beneficial to democracy. Anna Gerbrandy, a legal scholar, offered insight on how to re-conceptualize power, and various facets thereof, in the digital economy. As she argued, harms in the political/democratic domain stemmed from corporate power can be addressed by competition law, which she proposes to deploy more directly to constrain market power. Cecilia Rikap's (an economist) presentation highlighted the difficulty of a path to EU digital sovereignty in a context in which curbing the power of mostly US-based Big Tech has become very insidious. Among the difficulties faced by regulators in dealing with Big Tech companies, Rikap emphasizes: the complexity of entanglements between political and economic power; the nodal role of big tech in complex economic networks; and the growing dependence on the public Cloud provided by Big-Tech, which is heightened by the global race for AI sovereignty. Finally, Sebastien Pent, representative of the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) offered insight on how to enforce competition law and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the interest of consumers, emphasizing the importance of regulatory dialogue, and how DMA enforcement has already produced visible improvement for consumers. Still, Pent warns, the level of non-compliance by Gatekeepers with DMA obligations remains high. You can watch our third panel here.
Our last panel, Uncertainty and the Climate Crisis presented different insights around how climate policy and green transitions deal with uncertainty. Christina Eckes started by emphasizing certainties: the link between CO2 emission and temperature increase is certain, and the climate crisis is coming. In turn, there is still uncertainty about climate impact, and when we reach tipping points that bring large shifts in climate. Ultimately, as Eckes notes, legal truth-finding and how to deal with uncertainty is a normative choice; effective climate action requires precautionary approaches that accept some level of uncertainty. Tim Bleeker presented his work on Corporate climate transition planning, a key instrument deployed by EU law to advance green transition, by requiring companies to monitor and act upon their climate impact. The implementation of corporate transition planning faces several uncertainties, for example how to turn reduction targets into concrete actions by companies. In turn transition planning can become an instrument for companies to learn and transform. Yannick van der Berg focused on the complexity of the social transformation the green transition requires. He offered insights about leveraging insights from social practice theory to effectuate the green transition. As he shows reducing CO2 emissions from aviation requires transforming social practices and ideas around vacationing and pleasure. You can watch a recording of the fourth panel here.