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
Continue reading Not All Energy Shocks Are Created Equal: What the ECB Should Learn from the Inflation Surge
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
Continue reading Why Europe’s challenge is not invention, but scale, risk, capital, and institutional speed.
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
Continue reading Which Security? National Interest, National Security, Essential Security Interests, Public Security, and Public Order
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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Arturo Artom’s La nuova intelligenza argues that we are living through a deep transformation in the way intelligence, work, education, and personal identity function. The book’s central thesis is that the old twentieth-century model—based on stable skills, duty, linear careers, and fixed identities—is no longer sufficient in an environment shaped by artificial intelligence, digital networks, geopolitical instability,
Continue reading The New Intelligence: Connecting, Exploring, Adapting
The European Commission’s new Communication on European Tech Sovereignty marks a significant shift in the EU’s digital policy agenda. The message is clear: Europe can no longer rely primarily on regulation, resilience, and risk mitigation. It must now build, control, and scale the technologies that underpin its economy, security, and democratic life. The Communication starts from a
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Governor Fabio Panetta’s “Concluding Remarks,” delivered on 29 May 2026, paint a picture of a surprisingly resilient global economy shaken by a new energy shock — and point to artificial intelligence as the decisive battleground for Italy’s future. Every year, at the end of May, the Governor of the Bank of Italy closes the Annual
Continue reading A More Fragile World, a Tech Transition to Steer: What the Bank of Italy Governor’s 2025 Report Tells Us
Thomas Kuhn changed the way we think about scientific progress. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn challenged the idea that science advances simply through the steady accumulation of facts. He argued that mature sciences usually operate within a dominant “paradigm”: a shared framework of theories, methods, standards, and exemplary problems that shapes what a scientific
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Federico Fubini’s article on Donald Trump’s economic interventionism captures a crucial shift in contemporary capitalism. The phrase “a socialist in the White House” is rhetorically effective, but analytically imprecise. What is emerging in the United States is not socialism. It is a more political, strategic, and securitized form of capitalism. The most striking cases concern
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Article 105 of the General Court’s Rules of Procedure deals with how the Court handles classified or security-sensitive information in a case. The core tension it resolves: normally both parties to a case must see all evidence (the adversarial principle), but sometimes a party needs to rely on information whose disclosure would harm EU or
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Today, the European Parliament approved new EU rules on the screening of foreign investments, with 508 votes in favour, 64 against and 90 abstentions. The reform makes screening mandatory in sensitive sectors such as defence, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, critical raw materials and financial services. The objective is to identify and address risks to security or
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What the IAA is On 4 March 2026 the European Commission published its proposal for an Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), COM(2026) 100 final. The instrument is, at first glance, one more entry in the now-crowded catalogue of EU industrial-policy regulations that began with the Net-Zero Industry Act, the Critical Raw Materials Act, and the Chips Act. But
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On 30 September 1938, after returning from the Munich Conference, Neville Chamberlain addressed the British public first at Heston Aerodrome and later outside 10 Downing Street, where he declared that he believed it was ‘peace for our time. “This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor Hitler and here is the paper which
Continue reading On 30 September 1938, after returning from the Munich Conference, Neville Chamberlain …
The Italian National Security Strategy, as defined by Article 5 of the Prime Ministerial Decree of 22 April 2026, constitutes the central framework for identifying, protecting, and advancing the State’s fundamental security interests. It operates as a high-level strategic guidance document, designed to address the full spectrum of threats and risks affecting national security, while
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The Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers of 22 April 2026 establishes the implementing regulation for Article 7-bis, paragraph 5, of Decree-Law No. 174 of 30 October 2015, concerning the management of crisis situations involving aspects of national security. In practical terms, the decree reorganizes and clarifies how Italy’s highest governmental security coordination body,
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The latest judicial setback for presidential tariff power did not come from the Supreme Court. It came from the U.S. Court of International Trade, in a case involving the Trump administration’s attempt to repackage a global tariff program under a different statutory authority: Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The case, commonly reported
Continue reading After the Supreme Court rejected IEEPA tariffs, the administration turned to Section 122 of the Trade Act.: The Court of International Trade was not persuaded.
Financial markets are neither a casino nor a church. They are better understood as a distorted mirror in which human beings project what they think, fear, and hope about the future. To understand markets, therefore, is not only to understand numbers, interest rates, balance sheets, or economic models. It is also to understand human behaviour:
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In the United States, one of the oldest constitutional arguments is also one of the most practical: who gets to decide when the country uses military force? The Constitution does not place all war-related authority in one branch. Congress has powers such as declaring war and funding the armed forces, while the President is designated
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Robert H. Jackson, “The Challenge of International Lawlessness,” American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 27, 1941, pp. 690-693. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25713307 Writing in 1941 as World War II shattered European order, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson confronts American disillusionment with international law. He rejects both idealistic faith in global organizations and isolationist trust in distance, arguing instead
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Philip C. Jessup’s article “The Reality of International Law” was published in Foreign Affairs, Volume 18, Number 2, in January 1940. Jessup’s central argument is that international law is real, even though it is weak, often violated, and imperfectly enforced. He rejects the common claim that international law does not exist simply because states break it. For him, violations do not
Continue reading “The Reality of International Law” by Philip C. Jessup, Foreign Affairs, Volume 18, Number 2, in January 1940.
At a moment when international law is routinely described as ineffective, selective, or even obsolete, Not Dead Yet – International Law in an Age of Uncertainty offers a deliberately counter-intuitive intervention. The 2025 International Law Report was prepared by Lex International, a philanthropic initiative dedicated to reinforcing the international legal order by reshaping narratives and supporting new
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Deterrence is a concept that refers to the ability to prevent an action through the threat of negative consequences. This mechanism appears in several contexts, including international politics, psychology, economics, and social behavior, to influence the choices of individuals or groups. The main goal of deterrence is to encourage a different decision from the one that might be taken in the
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The United States supported China’s accession to the WTO primarily because policymakers believed it would advance three interrelated objectives. Yes, there is a substantial literature on this. Useful studies include work by Nicholas Lardy at Brookings and later at the Peterson Institute, which defended accession mainly in terms of market opening and Chinese economic reform;
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On April 24 in Washington, the European Union and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding launching a strategic partnership on critical minerals. Signed by EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agreement is more than a diplomatic marker. It reflects a broader shift in how both sides
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According to the paper published in January 2026 by Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Andrea Ferrero, Luca Fornaro, and Martin Wolf, titled Industrial Policies, Global Imbalances and Technological Hegemony, industrial policy is not just about helping domestic firms grow. It can also reshape trade balances, redirect global capital flows, and ultimately change which countries lead in technology. The paper
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Debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is often framed too vaguely. The standard defense is familiar: the provision authorizes the collection of foreign intelligence by targeting non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located abroad. That statement is accurate as far as it goes. But it does not identify the constitutional pressure
Continue reading Section 702’s real problem is not foreign collection. It is domestic access without a warrant.
A recent CEPR study “The European Union under pressure? Exploring Chinese trade deflection,” examines whether US tariffs on Chinese goods have caused a redirection of Chinese exports toward third markets, with a particular focus on the European Union. Using highly disaggregated monthly trade data and a difference-in-differences framework, the authors compare product categories hit by US
Continue reading According to CEPR, trade deflection to Europe is real — but not evenly distributed across the economy
The United States is now moving into the first operational stage of refunding certain duties collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Beginning April 20, 2026, eligible importers and authorized customs brokers can submit Phase 1 refund requests electronically through the new CAPE function in the ACE Portal, which is designed to consolidate
Continue reading U.S. Customs opens First Phase of IEEPA duty refunds: $160 Billion Coming Back?
Edward Fishman’s “How to Fight an Economic War” is a sharp and timely analysis of how globalization has been transformed from a system of mutual gain into a field of strategic competition. The article argues that states now weaponize the very structures that once underpinned economic integration—currencies, payment systems, export controls, critical minerals, and supply
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The United Nations addresses the threat of international terrorism through several key bodies and committees, primarily concentrated under the Security Council and the Secretariat. The number of people working within these organizations varies significantly depending on whether you are counting diplomats (Member States) or technical staff (International Civil Servants). Overall, the UN counter-terrorism “architecture” is relatively small compared
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The Opinion of Advocate General ?apeta in Elisa Eesti (Case C-354/24) of 19 March 2026 is one of those cases that looks, at first glance, highly technical, almost niche, and then suddenly reveals itself as something much larger. On the surface, the dispute concerns an Estonian authorisation regime for telecom equipment. In substance, it is about a
Continue reading Elisa Eesti: Security Exceptionalism in EU Electronic Communications Law
The joint U.S.–Israeli strike on Iran at the end of February 2026 has triggered a profound shock in the global energy system. What initially appeared as a military escalation in the Middle East has quickly evolved into a broader energy confrontation, affecting supply chains, strategic reserves, diplomatic alignments and global markets. The immediate epicenter of the
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Independent authorities are public bodies that exercise regulatory, supervisory, or guarantee functions while remaining at a certain distance from the ordinary political-administrative circuit.Their main purpose is to entrust technically complex or sensitive matters to bodies that are less exposed to party politics. This is especially relevant in areas such as market regulation, competition, privacy, public
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