“I have the impression that, even if we handed political decision-makers today the newspaper from next year, many of them would not know what to do with it.” The remark is deliberately paradoxical, but it captures a real problem: the challenge facing our democracies is not simply that of predicting the future. More fundamentally, it
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«Ho l’impressione che anche se consegnassimo oggi ai decisori politici il giornale dell’anno prossimo, molti non saprebbero che farsene». La battuta è volutamente paradossale, ma coglie un punto reale: il problema delle nostre democrazie in Europa e in Italia non è soltanto quello di prevedere il futuro. È, più radicalmente, quello di saper riconoscere per
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Il 1° dicembre 2025 l’Assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite ha adottato la risoluzione 80/23 sui «Possible risks of the integration of artificial intelligence into command, control and communications systems of nuclear weapons». Il titolo è già indicativo della specificità dell’intervento: non si tratta, in termini generali, dell’impiego militare dell’intelligenza artificiale, né della questione delle armi
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La coercizione economica sta diventando una componente sempre più stabile delle relazioni internazionali. Uno studio pubblicato dal Parlamento europeo nel settembre 2026 analizza 41 episodi di pressione economica che hanno interessato l’Unione europea tra il 2018 e il 2026. Il dato forse più interessante non riguarda soltanto il numero dei casi, ma la loro persistenza:
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Chi ha il potere di imporre dazi negli Stati Uniti? Congresso, Presidente ed evoluzione del diritto costituzionale statunitense in materia di politica commerciale I dazi sono tornati al centro della politica economica ed estera degli Stati Uniti. Vengono utilizzati sempre più spesso non soltanto per proteggere le industrie nazionali, ma anche per perseguire obiettivi più
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I dazi vengono spesso presentati come una deviazione rispetto a una condizione “normale” di libero scambio. La storia economica suggerisce però una lettura più complessa. Per gran parte dell’età moderna e contemporanea, le tariffe doganali hanno rappresentato uno strumento ordinario della politica degli Stati: servivano a finanziare il bilancio pubblico, proteggere industrie nazionali, sostenere processi
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From IEEPA emergency tariffs to a multi-statute architecture The U.S. tariff landscape in 2026 looks markedly different from the system constructed during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term. The change is not that tariffs have disappeared. Rather, the legal architecture supporting them has been substantially reorganised. A useful starting point is the
Continue reading After the Supreme Court: How U.S. Tariff Policy Was Rebuilt in 2026

Congress, the President, and the changing constitutional law of U.S. trade policy Tariffs have returned to the centre of U.S. economic and foreign policy. They are increasingly used not only to protect domestic industries, but also to pursue broader objectives involving national security, economic security, strategic competition, supply chains, and relations with major trading partners.
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The EU shift from sanctions adoption to criminal enforcement For many years, a structural weakness of EU sanctions policy lay in enforcement. Restrictive measures such as asset freezes, trade restrictions, export bans and prohibitions on services are adopted at Union level, but the criminal consequences of violating them traditionally depended on national law. Directive (EU)
Continue reading Violating EU Sanctions: Directive (EU) 2024/1226 and Italy’s New Criminal Enforcement Regime

The European Union’s sanctions policy has gradually moved beyond the traditional model of restrictive measures directed at particular countries. One of the clearest expressions of this development is the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, established in December 2020 to enable the Union to target individuals and entities responsible for serious human rights violations and abuses
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The United States’ tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 have evolved into one of the most significant examples of the growing interaction between trade policy, industrial policy and national security. What began in 2018 as a relatively straightforward system of additional duties on imported steel and
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Security Council resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1373 (2001) are frequently treated as two components of the same international counter-terrorism architecture. That is correct at a functional level, particularly in relation to terrorist financing and asset freezing. Legally, however, the two frameworks operate through substantially different regulatory techniques. The essential distinction is that the 1267 framework
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When lawyers speak of the “Italian sanctions authority”, the expression is convenient but potentially misleading. Italy does not entrust the implementation of international and European Union restrictive measures to a single administrative body. The national system is deliberately fragmented by function. The clearest example is the division between the Autorita Nazionale UAMA at the Ministry of Foreign
Continue reading Who Implements Sanctions in Italy? UAMA, the Financial Security Committee (CSF), and a Deliberately Divided System

The European Union’s sanctions policy has gradually moved beyond the traditional model of restrictive measures directed at particular countries. One of the clearest expressions of this development is the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, established in December 2020 to enable the Union to target individuals and entities responsible for serious human rights violations and abuses
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Cyber operations have become an increasingly important dimension of international security. They may disrupt critical infrastructure, interfere with public institutions, compromise classified information or affect essential services without crossing a territorial border in the traditional sense. For the European Union, this has raised a difficult foreign-policy question: how can malicious cyber conduct be met with
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The European Union’s response to Russian hybrid activities has developed into a distinct sanctions regime with an increasingly broad reach. Rather than focusing exclusively on Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, the framework addresses forms of destabilisation that operate across the boundaries between external security, cyber operations, information manipulation, interference with democratic processes and attacks on
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The European Union has developed a distinct sanctions regime specifically directed against the proliferation and use of chemical weapons. Unlike geographically defined sanctions regimes, this framework is thematic: designation depends on conduct connected with chemical weapons rather than on nationality, territorial location or involvement in a particular conflict. The regime was established in October 2018,
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The United States Congress has approved the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, the most significant legislative package of new sanctions against Russia adopted since the beginning of the second Trump administration. Named after Senator Lindsey Graham, who had been one of the principal sponsors of the initiative before his death in
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On 16 September 2026, the General Court delivered its judgment in Gagarina v Council (T-460/24), concerning the inclusion of Russian singer Polina Gagarina on the EU sanctions list relating to actions undermining the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. The judgment is significant for two reasons. First, it confirms that participation in State-sponsored propaganda events may
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The document does not treat security as a self-contained policy field. Instead, security functions as a cross-cutting category connecting defence, borders, critical infrastructure, energy, democratic resilience, artificial intelligence, enlargement and economic policy. 1. European security and defence The clearest passage states that, in a more dangerous and uncertain world, Europe must take greater responsibility for
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I had been waiting for this one. Case C-67/25 had been languishing on the Court’s docket for months, and for anyone keeping an eye on how the EU enforces its information sanctions against Russia — genuinely enforces them, not just on paper — the preliminary reference out of Germany posed the kind of question that
Continue reading The CJEU Clarifies the Scope of the EU Ban on Broadcasting Russian State-Controlled Media

There is a vocabulary that saturates almost every conversation about education today. Learning outcomes. Skills. Performance indicators. Employability. Assessment. Measurable results. You hear it in faculty meetings, in ministerial documents, in accreditation reports, in the way students themselves describe what they expect from a degree. It is not that any of this is wrong, exactly.
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Calling Ireland a tax haven is a good way to end a conversation before it starts. The phrase is politically loaded, slightly unfair, and — this is the problem — not entirely wrong. Ireland is not the Cayman Islands. It has real factories, real offices, real workers, real universities producing real graduates who go to
Continue reading Ireland, Big Tech and the European Tax System: this is about fairness, not ideology

Germany did not win globalisation in general. It won a particular globalisation — one that handsomely rewarded countries willing to run persistent trade surpluses, hold wages down, starve domestic demand, and ride a real exchange rate that competitors locked inside the euro could not devalue away. The research on this is extensive and, at this point, fairly
Continue reading Germany as Beneficiary and Victim of the Same System — and the Limits of Unilateral Rebalancing

Germany is entering a decisive phase in the reform of its intelligence law. The debate is no longer limited to technical adjustments after constitutional litigation. It now concerns the future institutional role of the federal intelligence services, especially the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), in an environment shaped by cyber operations, sabotage, hybrid threats, and renewed strategic competition. The
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1. Structural difference: the JCPOA and the Islamabad Memorandum are not the same type of agreement The 2015 JCPOA was a technical, nuclear-focused, multilateral agreement. On one side stood Iran; on the other, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Its object was essentially the limitation, verification, and
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A recent Bank of Italy paper, China Shock 2.0: Structural Drivers and Implications for the Euro Area, argues that the post-pandemic surge in Chinese exports marks a new phase of competitive pressure on Europe. This is not simply a replay of the early-2000s “China shock” following China’s accession to the WTO. That earlier episode was largely
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Vienna Convention – Law Treaties 1969 art. 31-33 SECTION 3. INTERPRETATION OF TREATIES Article 31 General rule of interpretation 1.A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose. 2.The
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Europe 2031 is one of the most stimulating contributions to the current debate on artificial intelligence, technological sovereignty, and Europe’s place in a rapidly changing geopolitical order. Written as a fictional scenario rather than a conventional policy report, it succeeds in translating abstract discussions about AI, compute, industrial policy, and strategic dependence into a compelling
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When discussing the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, the first mistake to avoid is treating them as three rigidly separated steps in a hierarchy. It is not enough to say that the strategic level is “more important,” the operational level is “intermediate,” and the tactical level is “lower.” That representation may be useful as a
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When U.S. Sanctions Meet EU Banking Rights: The CJEU’s Judgment in Jenec — Case C-81/24 On 11 June 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in Jenec, Case C-81/24, concerning access to basic banking services where a consumer appears on a United States sanctions list. The case arose in Slovenia. In 2022, a
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This continues from the previous post. Those who do research in a law faculty don’t disappear. But the source of their value changes. The most fragile part of legal research is the part that resembles standardizable informational work: searching for sources, summarizing articles, reconstructing case law, producing literature reviews, comparing legal texts, preparing first drafts. These
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Much of the debate on artificial intelligence is framed around a simple question: Which jobs will AI replace? This book asks a better one: Which parts of work become more valuable when AI makes many cognitive tasks cheaper? What will still matter when intelligence becomes cheap? This is the central question at the heart of the forthcoming volume Messy
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The euro area’s inflation shock of 2022–2023 was not simply a story about prices rising too fast. It was a stress test for monetary policy in an age of geopolitical fragmentation, energy insecurity, and recurring supply disruptions. Three recent papers prepared for the European Parliament’s ECON Committee examine precisely this issue. They converge on one
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Innovation is not the same thing as invention. Invention produces novelty; innovation transforms novelty into value. That transformation depends on an ecosystem: capital able to finance uncertainty, markets large enough to reward scale, institutions fast enough to enable experimentation, and a culture mature enough to distinguish failure from negligence. Innovation is not merely a question
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A vocabulary used loosely In contemporary legal and political debate, five expressions are made to carry a great deal of weight and are frequently treated as interchangeable: national interest, national security, essential (or fundamental) security interests of the State, public security, and public order. The promiscuity is understandable in political speech, where the point is
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ABSTRACT Strategic analysis keeps failing (Kabul, Kyiv, the late recognition that artillery and industrial capacity would decide the war) not because individuals err but because analytical systems don’t learn. Three interlocking failures explain it.  Empirical: the field keeps no score. It rewards visibility and confidence over calibration (Tetlock) and substitutes narrative plausibility for falsifiable prediction — coherent stories
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