Polanyi in Brussels: European Institutions and the Embedding of Markets in Society.

The article shows that the European Court of Justice has used its growing discretion within the institutions of the European Union (EU) to modify the disembedding of markets using detailed empirical evidence from the case law of the European Court of Justice regarding the free movement of labor. It draws on the inspiration of Karl Polanyi who saw a similar dialectic between market making and market modification in early state responses to the Industrial Revolution in England. The role of states and markets in Europe's first great transformation is noted.