Economic Security: Economic and Legal Aspects of Regulation and Safeguarding in Contemporary Conditions

Abstract

The article examines the economic and legal aspects of regulating and ensuring economic security under contemporary conditions of wartime threats and multicrises. The necessity of forming a new comprehensive approach to economic security –one that integrates economic, legal, and institutional components, takes into account the complex nature of modern threats, and aligns with international standards – is substantiated. From an economic-legal perspective, economic security is defined as a state of protection of the national economic system, its institutions, business entities, and society from internal and external threats, which ensures the ability of the economy to function in a stable, predictable, and continuous manner; to preserve and expand its economic potential; to generate development, innovation, and competitiveness; and to safeguard strategic national interests under conditions of risks, crises, and shocks, including those of a military nature. It is argued that such a state is achieved through a set of economic, legal, regulatory, institutional, and organisational mechanisms aimed at identifying, assessing, preventing, mitigating, and neutralising threats, as well as maintaining economic resilience, adaptability, recovery capacity, and development. It is established that modern Ukrainian scholarship consistently and reasonably views economic security as a multilevel phenomenon comprising the macro-level (the state), the meso-level (regions/sectors), and the micro-level (business entities). The content of each level within the economic security system is clarified, and an attempt is made to answer the question of why, from a legal standpoint, such a gradation is necessary and what its practical significance is for the legal system. Several related economic-legal categories: “economic security”, “economic risk”, “economic threat”, “economic resilience”, and “economic defence capability”, are delineated, and an original doctrinal definition for each of these concepts is proposed. An original model of the economic and legal mechanism for ensuring economic security is developed. This mechanism is defined as a coherent, institutionally and normatively organised system of legal, organisational, economic, and managerial instruments designed to identify, assess, prevent, mitigate, and neutralise economic threats and risks; to ensure the resilience and recoverability of the economic system; and to protect its strategic interests in both peacetime and wartime. It is substantiated that such a mechanism should consist of four interrelated blocks: the institutional-organisational block, the normative-regulatory block, the economic resilience block, and the block of control and liability. Its architecture must be built upon the multilevel structure of economic security (macro-, meso-, and micro-levels), which enables coordination between state policy, sectoral regulation, and the behaviour of individual business entities. The article examines the experience of the European Union in the field of economic security. Taking into account the structure of the European economic-security regime, its conceptual foundations (“promote–protect–partner”), and its respective instruments (investment screening, technology control, cybersecurity, supply-chain resilience, and countermeasures against economic coercion), a set of general directions for harmonising the Ukrainian legal framework with EU approaches is proposed.