The Regulation on Foreign Subsidies Distorting the Internal Market

The book shows that the Regulation pursues its objective of ensuring greater equality of competitive conditions on the EU´s Internal Market only by accepting new bureaucracy, establishing the need for complex and extensive assessments and raising considerable legal uncertainties as a result of undefined legal terms and comprehensive Commission discretion. The EU legislators, the Council and the European Parliament, in June 2022 adopted a new regulation that entered into force 12 January 2023: Regulation 2022/2560 on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market. This book analyses the regulation in more detail. To this end, after the brief introduction, its rationale and core contents are first presented. Then, its scope of application is to be explored in more detail, as the Regulation was criticised early on with regard to its compatibility with international law, which has an intense bearing on the substantive and personal scope of application of the Regulation. Subsequently the central regulatory concepts of the Regulation will be presented and then the specific rules for concentrations and public procurement procedures analysed. The conclusion will summarise the findings.  In view of the likely backlash from powerful third countries, there is a risk of new distortions to the detriment of EU companies´ activities in third country markets.

Professor Wolfgang Weiß holds Chair in European and Public International Law at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. After studying law and economics at the University of Bayreuth/Germany and completing his legal state examinations, his doctorate with a thesis on the rights of defence in EC antitrust proceedings and his habilitation , he became Reader, then Professor in International Law at Oxford Brookes University and from 2006 to 2008 Professor of Public Law, International and European Law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, before he changed to the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer . His main areas of work are European constitutional and administrative law, EU foreign trade and competition law, and international economic law and WTO law. His most recent book publications are WTO Law and Domestic Regulation. Exploring the Determinants for the Impact of the WTO on Domestic Regulatory Autonomy, Beck-Hart-Nomos 2020; Welthandelsrecht, 3. Auflage 2022 (together with C. Ohler and M. Bungenberg).