The EU Discovers Emergency Powers: Russian Assets Edition

American presidents, and President Donald Trump in particular, have dramatically increased the use of emergency powers in the last few years. They have used emergency powers to pursue aggressive economic sanctions policies, forgive student loan debt, and overhaul U.S. trade policy, among many other things.

It turns out that the U.S. executive branch is not alone in treating emergency powers like bottomless sources of legal authority. The European Union has done this too.

And not unlike in the United States, the more aggressive the EU got in using executive authority, the more political and judicial backlash it faced. The most recent illustration of the EU leaning into emergency powers is its reliance on an emergency provision in the EU treaties, Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning