With a virus travelling fast across the globe in the early days of the pandemic and a number of global actors involved in all sort of interventions, globalisation as we knew it had come under strain. International organizations like the World Health Organizations have both acquired unprecedented visibility and suffered from an extraordinary crisis of legitimacy. Rules blocking air travel from high-risk countries were widely condemned at first, only to become mainstream as the infection figures rose. Recommendations in one country were hard rules in the next country and courts had to review measures ranging from state of emergency declarations to face mask mandates.

Global value chains were the subject of disruption, reconversion, contestation while governments quarrelled over face masks and vaccines. When economic activities more or less selectively went or were put on a halt, safety nets were introduced and new accommodations were sought. Change may be illusory or rather superficial: while scores of headlines announced that “the workplace” will never be the same again, car traffic (and pollution) levels have, in most cases, quickly gone back to pre-pandemic levels. The United States have re-joined the WHO and the EU concentrates much of its hopes for a quick recovery on a new business-as-usual trade deal with China. But there are reasons to think that many of the important discussions we have had during the past year will have a lasting impact: from access to healthcare to competition rules, the pandemic has brought a renewed interest in strong public institutions.

The Transformative Effects of Globalisation in Law (TEGL) research project is a collaboration between the law faculties of Maastricht University, Open Universiteit NL, Tilburg University and the University of Amsterdam.