Legal imaginations — the narratives we hold about what the law is and does — shape both political debate and judicial interpretation. The prevailing narrative around the AI Act centres on its substantive provisions, yet its primary effect likely lies elsewhere: in displacing national regulatory autonomy over AI. The Act is a constitutional oddity, exerting an exceptionally broad pre-emptive impact on the Member States. It occupies virtually the entire policy space of AI systems while imposing substantive obligations on only a fraction of them, producing an unusual asymmetry in which its deregulatory effect, achieved through maximum harmonization, far outstrips its reregulatory scope. This is not a critique of harmonization, but an observation that a legal imagination fixated on detailed substantive requirements misses the instrument’s true raison d’être: preventing regulatory fragmentation to strengthen the internal market. Only by shifting the narrative and recognizing the AI Act as both a regulatory framework and, crucially, a market-integration instrument adopted in an increasingly fraught geostrategic environment can debate about its future proceed with the clarity and honesty it demands.
Common Market Law Review