Global value chains in EU law

Abstract

There is a burgeoning legal literature about the legal underpinnings of global value chains (GVCs). This article contributes to this literature through the lens of European Union (EU) law and proposes a different conceptual way to read GVCs legally. To that end, the contribution proposes understanding the evolving EU law on GVCs as a process of institutionalization leading to at least three legal forms. In EU company law, GVCs manifest actor-centrically as corporate obligations to govern the value chain. This mostly happens in the policies related to sustainability, but also features in some digitalization policies. In EU consumer law, the value chain appears as a collective network of actors that also bears collective responsibility towards the consumer for the production process. Moreover, in EU market practices and trade law, the value chain is approached in a de-personified manner by, on the one hand, targeting products relating to the territory (import/internal market access) and, on the other hand, trading practices in relations characterised by power asymmetry. These findings suggests that, rather than identifying a uniform legal concept of GVCs in EU law, a fragmented picture emerges in which different sub-areas of EU law develop different, partly even opposing, legal understandings of GVCs.