There is a broad consensus that the EU has great sources of power but little agreement on how and when this power is actively leveraged to shape global market regulation. Scholars have noted a widespread fragmentation and called for studies that cover multiple cases and account for how contextual factors influence strategic aims. This article responds to these calls by conceptualizing 'regime vetting' as a technique used by the European Union to reach beyond its borders in various sectors. By coining this term, the article enables exploration of a form of active and de-centred power projection that leverages the EU's main sources of power. The article also offers a typology of four different types of regime vetting and propositions on how internal and external contextual factors systematically shape the strategic uses of regime vetting, thereby contributing to the theoretical discussion on how 'context matters' in shaping EU external action.

According to Article 48 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU), the founding treaties of the Union can only be amended through a three-step procedure. First, the Council calls an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), after having consulted the European Parliament (EP) and the Commission. Second, within the framework of the IGC, representatives of the governments of the Member States negotiate and sign the amendments to the treaties by common accord. Third, the agreement is submitted to national ratification procedures. When all three steps are concluded, each Member State having ratified the amendments to the treaty, the changes enter into force.

The European Union (EU) is commonly considered to be a regulatory great power that projects external influence based on the power vested in its internal market. Relatively little is known, however, about why and when the EU mobilises its market power to put direct pressure on non-cooperative countries in regulatory matters. This article examines a critical case of such power projection: the 'blacklisting' of third countries. Testing expectations drawn from some of the main theories of EU power, it finds that elite action to promote the rule of law best explains why the EU uses blacklisting, whereas bottom-up stakeholder pressure explains when this technique is used. A combination of the theories can therefore explain the puzzling pattern of where blacklisting schemes were set up with reference to EU norms and pegged to international law but eventually applied quasi-exclusively to tiny third countries. These findings call for further research on EU market power.