This chapter examines the European Union’s capacity to pursue the kind of industrial policy often associated with successful East-Asian economies. It identifies four main areas of tension between such policy ambitions and the legal–institutional structure of the internal market: (1) difficulties in centralising and coordinating industrial initiatives; (2) limited capacity to exercise control and discipline over firms; (3) conflicts between targeted state support and principles of non-discrimination; and (4) the absence of mechanisms to recoup public investments from industrial development. Conventional economic dichotomies shed little light on how industrial policy succeeds or fails. Instead, the chapter proposes to view industrial policy as a form of law that privileges sovereignty over property. To explore the historical roots of how the internal market constrains sovereign decision-making, it revisits the thought of Wilhelm Röpke. His ideas illuminate the enduring belief in the internal market as a project of peace and democratisation. This form of messianic legitimation—linking the four freedoms to moral and normative values—may make it difficult to confront how the current legal configuration of the internal market hinders industrial policies aimed at catching up, achieving strategic autonomy, or addressing environmental goals.