Global law and the sovereign state: The case of Euro -Groupings

In the European Union, a formal, conscious effort is being made to cast state law into the inter-state and transnational realm of the new economy. State law is central in the process, not just as sanction and source of a transnational, European law, but also as the determinant of a new division of institutional powers between the transnational legal order of the European Union and the territorial domain of Member State sovereignty. In the European experience, state law and its transnational European form have mediated the globalization process, adjusting the sovereignty of states to the de-territorializing transnational norms of an emergent global legal order comprised of both formal and informal legal regimes. Any attempt to exclude state law from the discussions of globalization fails to take full account of the richer understanding of law and legal order achieved in the studies of legal pluralism, and discounts the experiences of the new economy described in the business and international relations literatures.;The Europeans have attempted to develop a company law among states that would function at the same transnational level as those business practices and corporate forms which states seek to regulate. Specifically, European company law facilitates certain corporate forms and inter-corporate business practices now recognized as being institutional norms indigenous to the new economy. Several European corporate forms are being proposed, but only one is in full operation. The research on how the European Economic Interest Grouping (Euro-Grouping) came to have certain legal characteristics and on the experiences of Euro-Groupings in operation proves useful in appreciating globalization's challenge that Europeans have already taken up, and others face: the management of the clash between state law and the informal legal regimes which drive the globalization process.;Globalization is often defined by the emergence of a new form of global capitalism, driven by technological change and innovations. It is widely accepted that global markets have emerged and that business has adapted competitive strategy to function at the global level. The thesis concludes that both good governance and governance for the public good requires a response from the state. In the European case, the Member States pool sovereignty to establish a transnational legal order, debating what should be harmonized at a transnational level and what should remain "provincial." Their response has taken legal form, but it is always "political" in the conventional sense. As such, it leaves open the possibility, however, difficult or removed, for a debate about the public interest.