Mondialisation et interventions publiques dans le marché
Du contrôle juridictionnel de l’intervention publique à l’encadrement juridique par l’intégration économique régionale ou globale : aides publiques et fiscalité – quelques pistes pour un programme de recherche
Jacques Ziller
The report addresses the question whether and how economic globalisation affects the
development of national rules governing public intervention into the market place, or
whether the erosion of the interventionist power of States is due to changes of political
and economic thought, by presenting a research agenda of comparative public law based
on three hypothesis : First, public intervention into the market place, in particular by way
of subsidies granted to enterprises and of fiscal measures, has been a core element of State
sovereignty so that the limitation to which it has become subject due to regional
integration and globalisation puts into question the very fundament upon which the law
governing such interventions rest. Second, the establishment of judicial control over
public intervention into the market place by virtue of such framework rules of is not
without historical precedent ; in particular, a comparison may be made between, on the
one hand, a State’s judicial control over subsidies granted and fiscal measures taken by
local government, and, on the other, supranational or international ways of judicial
control over State aids and fiscal measures. Third, however, this analogy may not be
pushed to the assumption that the framework rules resulting from regional integration for
State intervention, let alone the global rules for such intervention, might constitute the
nucleus for the development of a global federal State.
The first hypothesis is explained in more detail by a comparative historical
summary of the State’s sovereign role in the economy and the rise of the rule of law
as a way to control State intervention : it is much more the late result of the constraints
of economic integration and globalisation than of the domestic evolution of the law.
The substantiation of the second hypothesis constitutes a central part of the report,
drawing extensively on French precedent, and contrasting it with both a comparative
perspective and with the Treaty of Rome’s vision of missions of public service or,
more precisely, of public interest. A main result of a more extensive examination of
the proposed analogy may be that, contrary to what is frequently suggested, the limits
which the law has set to State intervention in recent times are much more the result
of framework building due to integration and globalisation than of a general change
of political and economic thought. The third, cautionary hypothesis is explained,
first, by reference to the organisation of judicial control which, on the one hand, States
may exercise over local economic intervention, and, on the other, which the
European Community or the World Trade Organisation have developed so far. In
addition it is pointed to the differences which exist between the hierarchical structure
of a State’s legal order and the over-lapping layers of national and supranational or
international law that characterize the legal framework of globalisation. Such
overlaps must be accommodated by reconciliatory rules of the kind that apply in
cases of conflicts of laws, rather than by straightforward primacy rules. Thus, though
due to their voluntary integration into a broader legal-economic framework, States
may loose much of their sovereign power over territorial markets, that power does
not necessarily accrue to the supranational or international organisation nor is the
importance of the national State diminished. What does change, however, is the role
the State has to play within the new institutional framework.
• 1 Introduction
• 2 L’interventionnisme économique, en particulier par les aides aux entreprises et la fiscalité,
était au coeur de la souveraineté de l'état, si bien que son encadrement par l'intégration régionale et la mondialisation
remet en cause les fondements du droit qui leur était applicable
• 3 Le régime juridique de cet encadrement de l'interventionnisme de l'état n'est pas
totalement inédit : le droit des collectivités territoriales en fournit certains précédents
— 3.1 Du contrôle du socialisme municipal par le Conseil d’État
français au contrôle des aides d’État en droit communautaire
et à celui des subventions en droit de l’OMC
— 3.2 La limitation de l’autonomie fiscale par la structure
des compétences en matière fiscale
• 4 L’intégration régionale et la mondialisation restent loin de créer ne fût-ce qu'un embryon
d'état fédéral global, même en matière de droit économique
• 5 Conclusions