Neoliberal means to dirigiste ends: explaining the French government’s use of Heroic Industrial Policy Discourse (HIPD) in EU politics

Observers in academia and media alike have observed a return of ‘French ideas’ in the European Union (EU), equated with the legacy of dirigisme. However, there has been relatively little interest in why economic voluntarism remained so resilient in French government discourse. After all, the country has been a central actor in the making of embedded neoliberalism in Europe and implemented market reforms no less profound than in other member states. French material interests only provide a partial explanation for this discursive resilience. This paper builds on discursive institutionalism to explain how dirigiste communicative discourse and neoliberal coordinative discourse interact and jointly shape the French government’s input into EU politics. Using secondary literature and original empirical material based on the uses of the ‘European sovereignty’ concept between 1995 and 2017, I show that Heroic Industrial Policy Discourse is used to justify the extension of (EU-driven) market logics into all spheres of public action in France on the grounds that this will, at an indeterminate future, lead to the implementation of dirigisme on a grander scale.