The legislative history of the EU’s anti-coercion instrument

Abstract

In the last couple of years, the EU and its Member States have increasingly been the target of a number of third-country measures, including US extra-territorial sanctions and Chinese trade embargoes. Some of these measures are ‘caught’ by the Blocking Statute but some have caused headaches to EU policy-makers on how to best tackle them. The Anti-Coercion Instrument, adopted in 2023, is one of the latest tools at the European Union’s (EU) disposal to tackle economic coercion. The aim of this article is to show the legislative history of this new EU instrument and how it came about. The key role of preparing this legislation was played by the so-called ‘geopolitical Commission’ that is nowadays committed to assertively use the EU’s trade competences to advance foreign and security policy objectives. Due to the foreign and security policy implications of the Anti-Coercion Instrument, the article includes some political and security policy statements to better contextualise the need to adopt such a legislation.