InvestEU: Neoliberal Lineages and Contradictions in the New EU Industrial Policy

The notion of an industrial policy renaissance has become a defining theme in recent political economy scholarship. In the European Union (EU), scholars have identified the emergence of a “new EU industrial policy” aimed at strengthening EU leadership in key strategic sectors. A central debate concerns whether this embodies a substantive break from or a continuity with prior neoliberal frameworks. In this article, we argue that addressing this question requires moving beyond the macro-structural level of the new EU industrial policy “in general” towards examining its component elements “in particular.” Focussing on InvestEU—a flagship programme designed to mobilise public and private capital in support of strategic industrial policy goals—we demonstrate how the development, architecture, and implementation of this key initiative reveals significant continuities with past policy practices. Rather than treating this as conclusive evidence of neoliberal continuity, we argue that the case study illuminates important contradictions within the EU’s new industrial policy.