The Idea

GovLoss is Giacomo Tagiuri's ERC Starting Grant project, The Governance of Loss in the European Union. In his own words, from two interviews with UvA:

The project is motivated by the observation that interrelated processes of economic transformation (globalization; technological change, including digitization and AI; and climate change, including efforts to mitigate it) generate intense loss in our societies.

When I use the word 'losers' I seek to describe those who lose out in economic transformation: the businesses and workers who rely on an economic arrangement that becomes outdated.

I'm Italian. When you drive across Italy, you see the negative effects in small towns. A small supermarket closes, and it's not just someone losing their business, but there is also a collective loss: people no longer have easy access to a shop and the meaningful experiences that come with it. These types of examples inspire me in terms of what the law can do to ease the blow.

I theorize based on case studies from the primary (agriculture and fisheries), secondary (automotive) and tertiary sector (consumer services like commerce and tourism), so as to rely on a somewhat comprehensive representation of the economy.

In agriculture and fisheries the effects of climate change and the green transition are most prominent; in the automotive industry, the effects of technological change (automation) and the green transition; in consumer services, I look at trade liberalization (EU induced liberalization) and digitization.

As I hypothesize, strategies for governing loss emerge not only in the welfare state or labor law, but a much broader array of areas of the law and regulatory interventions: consumer and competition law; private law; market regulation; forms of participatory governance in administrative law, among others.

The economy is not just about buying things: it is also about creating meaning.

Full interviews: ACES, Nov 2025 · UvA Faculty of Law, Sept 2025

The project is still taking shape. This page will be updated as the research develops.