The Freiburg Center for European Policy (CEP): A European Conservative-Neoliberal Legal Movement in the Making?

Important literature on think tanks and neoliberal and conservative social movements in the United States have pointed out the legal turn many organizations linked to the Koch brothers and others in the U.S. right wing movement took. Legal networks were consolidated in the law and economics movement and the Federalist Society (Teles 2008), for example. Last but not least, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been founded to prepare model legislation to be distributed (via think tanks organized in the State Policy Network) across the U.S. states (Hertel-Fernandez 2019). Together with campaign organizations like American for Prosperity, ALEC and think tank networks form a formidable alliance pushing for neoliberal and conservative change outside the political parties, but in close interaction with the Republican Party. In Europe, the Center for Policy Studies (CEP) instead has been founded in 2006 to assess EU legislation from a neoliberal (ordoliberal) perspective. Beyond the high level legal expertise assembled under the roof of CEP to cover legislative proposals in most policy areas of the EU, CEP officials conduct contract studies for business related customers (like the initiative for a new social market economy, INSM) and conduct lobby efforts in Brussels. The paper aims to provide a first overview over the manifold activities of the CEP and a first assessment of some of the influence strategies carried out via this organization. The question to be raised in the context of CEP and its partners is not if, but which kind of influence this think tank exerts and how this is accomplished.