Law as an industrial weapon

Introduction: The systemic integration of law into corporate strategy

In today’s globalized competitive environment, the use of law has gone beyond its traditional function as an “ensemble of rules governing the conduct of people living in society”[1] and has become integrated into the economic intelligence doctrines of multinational corporations. This phenomenon, described as lawfare (or legal warfare), refers to the strategic use of normative and judicial systems to establish, maintain, or reverse a balance of power in order to constrain an adversary. Historically identified as a weapon through the extraterritorial reach of law by a foreign state power[2], lawfare is now deployed by major industrial groups as a direct lever for creating and protecting value.

According to economic intelligence experts such as Ali Laïdi[3], Christian Harbulot, or Olivier de Maison Rouge[4] (École de Guerre Économique), legal norms and their instrumentalization now constitute a decisive weapon in economic warfare. An entity’s ability to impose its rules, overwhelm adversaries through procedures, or shape regulation (normative lobbying) reflects a dynamic of cognitive encirclement and resource control.

ArcelorMittal, a multinational headquartered in Luxembourg, is among the global leaders in the steel sector, with annual crude steel output of 58 million tonnes in 2024 and revenue exceeding $62 billion. Operating in a heavy, capital-intensive industry subject to strong regulatory pressures (climate, environment, competition), the company has developed a documented, multidimensional global legal strategy. An analysis of its disputes shows that the legal department is not limited to a defensive role, but acts proactively on several fronts: against competitors to protect market share, against business partners to enforce its financial interests, vis-à-vis sovereign states to secure its investments, and vis-à-vis civil society to manage risks linked to its environmental footprint.

This article offers a mapping of ArcelorMittal’s lawfare strategy, drawing on a documented review of its industrial disputes, lobbying practices, and information management.

1. From the concept of lawfare to the ArcelorMittal case

Ifri summarizes lawfare as the use of law aimed at “establishing, sustaining, or reversing a balance of power” in order to constrain an adversary. Charles Dunlap, often cited as one of the leading theorists of the term, describes it as the use of law as a form of “asymmetrical warfare.” Originally, the concept belongs to the strategic and military field. But its flexibility explains its success in contemporary analysis of economic and normative confrontations.^[5] This extension to the corporate world has been conceptualized more explicitly in recent years. In an article published by the German Law Journal, legal scholar Sofie Fleerackers shows that private economic actors can mobilize strategic litigation not only to win a dispute, but also to produce political, regulatory, reputational, or sectoral effects^[6]. Her study emphasizes very concrete elements: choice of legal basis, selection of forum, articulation between legal remedies and influence, and even litigation used to “test” the limits of a judge or a norm. The European Union Emissions Trading System is at the center of her demonstration, which is directly relevant to the steel industry.^[7] Applied to ArcelorMittal, this framework does not allow one to assert the existence of a unified, clandestine plan of legally established “predation.” It does, however, make it possible to observe a recurring phenomenon: across several distinct cases, law functions as an operational shield, a negotiation tool, an offensive instrument for acquiring assets, a means of securing inputs, or a pathway for challenging the norm itself. For economic intelligence, the issue is therefore not only whether the company wins or loses on the merits. It is to understand how it governs time, evidence, rules, and public legitimacy through law.

2. Law as a tool of economic domination

The strategic use of law takes on particular significance when resources are structurally asymmetric. In 2024, the Cour des comptes recalled that around 400,000 industrial sites fall under the regime of classified installations for environmental protection^[8]. At the same time, organizations monitoring the duty of vigilance highlight the persistence of significant opacity regarding which groups are actually subject to these obligations and the quality of their public documentation. In other words, authorities and civil parties often operate in an environment where the operator controls a decisive share of the technical and documentary data needed to assess its own compliance. In this environment, a multinational’s advantage does not lie only in the number of lawyers it can mobilize. It lies in the ability to produce its own metrics, debate the measurement method, move the dispute from one arena to another, absorb the cost of the long term, and combine procedure, communication, and institutional negotiation. This is not merely an asymmetry of defense: it is an asymmetry in the production of legal reality. Whoever controls the data, technical categories, and the pace of proceedings already holds part of the outcome.^[9] The literature on corporate strategic litigation also emphasizes the multiplication of fronts. A single actor can combine an appeal against an administrative decision, a civil action, an opposition before a specialized office, European litigation, a counterclaim for damages, or a challenge to a general norm. In the ArcelorMittal case, this dispersion of arenas is evident: the local environment in Fos-sur-Mer, decarbonization and public aid in Dunkirk, immunity and liability in Taranto, insolvency law and security of supply in India, intellectual property in the TDI case, and challenges to the carbon market before European and French courts.^[10] This is where law ceases to be a simple language of compliance. It becomes an infrastructure of power. Winning definitively is not always necessary: delaying the enforcement of a measure, shifting the debate to technical expertise, making an investment decision contingent on regulatory change, or moving the issue to a more favorable forum may be enough to generate a tangible industrial advantage. The strategic value of litigation then lies less in the final judgment than in the room for maneuver created in the meantime. ^[11]

3. Fos-sur-Mer: environmental litigation as an operating shield

The Fos-sur-Mer case is the most emblematic French sequence. On March 25, 2025, Reuters revealed that ArcelorMittal had been placed under formal investigation for endangering others, forgery and use of forged documents, as well as environmental damage, as part of a judicial investigation into pollution at the site. The Marseille public prosecutor specified that the company had been placed under judicial supervision, with bail set at €250,000 and a bank guarantee of €1.75 million. The case originated in a complaint filed in 2018 by the Association for the Defense and Protection of the Coastline of the Gulf of Fos, local residents, trade unions, and other organizations.^[12] The territorial context amplifies the case’s significance. Le Monde notes that the plant is located at the heart of an industrial-port zone responsible for around 20% of French industrial emissions. The newspaper also cites the Fos-Epseal study, funded by Anses and published in 2023, according to which certain chronic diseases are markedly more frequent there than the national average. The judicial sequence therefore unfolds in a territory where environmental and health-related conflict was already high before the opening of the judicial investigation.^[13] The litigation builds on a particular history. As early as 2018, Le Monde reported 36 alleged environmental violations over five years. In 2023, Marsactu, with Disclose and IrpiMedia, claimed that fine-particle emissions had exceeded regulatory thresholds for 240 days in 2022. The same issue then resurfaced in national and activist media. ArcelorMittal disputes these readings and maintains that annual limit values are respected. But the conflict already shows that the battle concerns measurement and data aggregation as much as the very principle of pollution.^[14] One procedural episode encapsulates the logic of defensive lawfare. In June 2023, the labor administration ordered the immediate shutdown of part of the site due to a situation deemed dangerous for employees exposed to carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reprotoxic substances. Seized by ArcelorMittal, the interim relief judge of the Marseille administrative court suspended that decision on July 6, 2023, finding that the immediate shutdown constituted a serious and manifestly unlawful infringement of the freedom to conduct a business, given the measures already undertaken and the consequences of an abrupt halt for operations.^[15] Fos-sur-Mer shows how a company can use procedure to maintain operations while the merits are still being debated. Law is not used there only to respond to an accusation; it is used to prevent a local health alert from immediately translating into a lasting production shutdown. The core of the conflict is therefore not only whether there was pollution or an offense. It is who controls the relevant metrics, the sanction timetable, and the public narrative of risk. ^[16]

ArcelorMittal counters these accusations with a narrative centered on transparency, investment, and emissions reductions. In its March 25, 2025 statement, the company claims to have invested more than €735 million at the site since 2014, about one third of which for environmental improvements, denies any falsification of data, and maintains that emissions comply with the prescribed annual limit values. Reuters also relays the group’s line that the site’s atmospheric emissions would have fallen by 70% compared with 2002. This response is not only a legal defense: it is an influence strategy. Faced with NGOs, local residents, and investigative media, the group seeks to reframe the conflict in terms of investment effort, a trajectory of progress, and an overall reading of emissions. From an economic intelligence perspective, the legal battle is therefore coupled with a battle over legitimacy: imposing the idea that it remains an industrial actor in transition, rather than an actor resistant to the norm. ^[17]

4. Dunkirk: public aid, local compliance, and regulatory negotiation

In Dunkirk, the conflict takes a more subtle form. In January 2024, the French Ministry of the Economy recalled that the site emitted around 12 MtCO2 per year, i.e., 15% of French industrial emissions. The State then announced maximum public support of €850 million for a decarbonization project estimated at €1.8 billion, after approval by the European Commission. The site was presented as a central link in French decarbonization and steel sovereignty.^[18] At the same time, local environmental compliance remained contested. A Géorisques inspection report dated April 26, 2024 noted that the operator had not restored compliance with certain best available techniques, notably regarding visible emissions during the charging of coke ovens. The 2022 report by DREAL Hauts-de-France also ranked ArcelorMittal Dunkirk first regionally for industrial dust emissions. The site is therefore both indispensable to the public decarbonization strategy and durably exposed to compliance allegations on specific technical points.^[19] The 2024–2026 sequence shows that law and standards become variables of profitability here. In November 2024, Reuters revealed that ArcelorMittal was delaying several green investments in Europe, citing insufficient trade protections and uncertainty over the effectiveness of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Then, in February 2026, after a reduction in certain steel import quotas and the implementation of the carbon mechanism, the group finally announced in Dunkirk the construction of a €1.3 billion electric furnace, while acknowledging that the project was less ambitious than the initial €1.8 billion version.^[20] Dunkirk is not about spectacular litigation, but about regulatory warfare. The company publicly explains that its investment decision depends on the level of trade protection, energy costs, the design of the carbon market, and public counterparts. Law is not only what compels it; it becomes what makes the investment rational—or not. This is a form of lawfare that is less judicial than politico-regulatory, where the norm is treated as a negotiable competitiveness variable.^[21] The question is then raised of ArcelorMittal’s capacity for regulatory capture. Indeed, the sources clearly document an asymmetric co-production of the rule: the State needs the group to meet its industrial and climate trajectory, while the group conditions the scale and pace of its investments on the framework that the State and the European Union are willing to offer. In this type of configuration, the industrial actor does not write the rule alone, but it powerfully helps define the moment when it becomes acceptable to it. ^[22]

5. Taranto: the toxic asset and the renegotiation of liability

The Italian Ilva case, now Acciaierie d’Italia, illustrates another function of law: reconfiguring the value of an asset based on its environmental and legal liabilities. In November 2019, ArcelorMittal announced that it wanted to withdraw from the acquisition of the Taranto steelworks after the Italian government removed a legal immunity regime linked to the decontamination plan. Rome immediately went to court to prevent this withdrawal, accusing the group of using the judicial lever as a pretext to exit a highly loss-making asset.^[23] The litigation then shifted to the closure of the site. In June 2021, the Italian Council of State ruled that production could continue, deeming illegitimate a municipal closure order for air pollution. Three years later, in June 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union recalled that an installation must be suspended if it poses serious and significant threats to the environment and human health. Finally, in January 2026, Reuters revealed that ArcelorMittal was claiming €1.8 billion from the Italian State in response to an action by public administrators seeking around €7 billion in damages.^[24] Taranto illustrates a more offensive version of industrial lawfare. Law is used there to renegotiate the conditions for entry, continued operation, closure, and compensation for an emblematic but extremely exposed site. The litigation is no longer only a defense against a sanction; it becomes the arena in which the asset’s value, the allocation of environmental risk, and the political cost of operating are renegotiated. In this logic, procedure directly contributes to the group’s industrial portfolio strategy. ^[25]

6. India: law to acquire, then to secure inputs

In India, law first appears as an offensive weapon of conquest. In November 2019, the Supreme Court paved the way for ArcelorMittal’s takeover of Essar Steel after more than two years of procedural battle under Indian bankruptcy law. Reuters noted that the ruling set a precedent by strengthening the role of the committee of creditors and limiting interference by the appellate tribunal in resolution plans.^[26] A few years later, the logic shifts to security of supply. In March 2025, Reuters reported that ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India was challenging in court Indian restrictions on imports of metallurgical coke, after warning the government of the risk of reduced production, or even the shutdown of a blast furnace. The group explained that these restrictions, applied with country-by-country quotas and retroactive effects, destabilized its orders, increased its costs, and threatened the timeline of its expansion projects.^[27] The Indian case shows that corporate lawfare is not used only to defend against sanctions. It can also open access to a strategic asset, then protect the inputs needed to operate it. Law becomes a component of security of supply. From an economic intelligence perspective, this continuity is essential: access to the courts complements lobbying, contracts, and logistics strategy as an instrument for controlling the value chain. ^[28]

7. TDI Isolation Antilles: the asymmetry between an innovative SME and a large group

Lawfare appears as a way to continue economic competition by other means. The legal conflict between Apple and Samsung is a striking example of this issue, with Apple accusing Samsung of infringing several patents covering innovations integrated into the iPhone.[29] However, this litigation pitted two tech giants against each other, with powerful financial and human resources but equal strength, in proceedings stretching over several years.

But horizontal lawfare, within an industrial ecosystem, sometimes aims to shift the conflict onto another chessboard that allows a strong actor to put pressure on one of its partners or competitors. Thus, a technical dispute involving specialized actors is replaced by another field: the legal chessboard, where the dispute is framed by judges less familiar with the subtleties of innovation protection.

The TDI case is representative of this asymmetry of resources and the marginalization of the technical issue. TDI Isolation Antilles is a Guadeloupe-based company active in insulation. The judgment of the Paris judicial court of March 1, 2024 states that it accused Proji, as well as ArcelorMittal Construction Réunion and ArcelorMittal Construction Caraïbes, of exploiting products called “Sunafoam” and “Maukabrizz” by infringing several claims of patents FR 2 910 504 and EP 2 059 641 relating to a building cladding material providing thermal and, preferably, acoustic insulation. ^[30]

These industrial property rights were validated several times by the European Patent Office[31]. TDI sued Proji for infringement as early as October 2011. The case management judge ordered a stay of proceedings in May 2012 pending the grant, maintenance, or revocation of the European patent. The judgment then specifies that the opposition before the European Patent Office was filed by Proji, rejected in 2017, and then followed by an appeal that was withdrawn in January 2020 after an unfavorable provisional opinion from the Board of Appeal. Only after this sequence did TDI bring proceedings against the ArcelorMittal companies in late 2020 and early 2021. In March 2024, the court invalidated the asserted patent claims, dismissed the infringement and unfair competition claims, and also dismissed the counterclaims for abusive proceedings.^[32] This case shows with rare clarity what procedural asymmetry is.

For the SME, the patent is the central asset for value creation; for the large group, the dispute is one risk among others, integrated into ordinary management of a litigation portfolio. Between 2011 and 2024, the dispute fragmented between the EPO and the French civil court, froze in a long stay, then reopened in a framework that had become more costly for the smaller structure.

The judgment makes it possible to measure this asymmetry very concretely. TDI was ordered to pay costs, €75,000 to Proji and €100,000 in total to the ArcelorMittal companies under Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The court also mentions a statement produced by ArcelorMittal reporting €281,000 in legal fees. Several articles published in late 2025 and early 2026 — Juriguide, L’EnerGeek, EconomieMatin and Parlons Politique — reread the case as the symptom of a structural weakness: even when an innovation has been technically validated in a specialized arena, its effective protection depends on the ability to sustain, for years, a procedural battle against far better-resourced adversaries.^[33] The TDI case demonstrates how procedure can become a filter of economic endurance. Judicial time wears down an overseas SME and a globalized group differently; the costs of expertise, representation, and fragmented forums do not carry the same meaning for one as for the other. The legal battle therefore does not decide only the applicable law: it redefines each party’s ability to hold out until judgment.^[34] The TDI case extends the lawfare hypothesis beyond relations between multinationals and states. It suggests that law can also function as an instrument of attrition in intellectual property conflicts pitting a large group against an innovative SME.

8. Challenging the rule itself: ArcelorMittal and the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS)

ArcelorMittal does not use law only to respond to allegations or defend an asset. The group has also challenged the general rule that structures its carbon cost. In 2009, the Conseil d’État dismissed the application by Arcelor Atlantique et Lorraine and other companies seeking the repeal of the decree transposing the European directive on the emissions trading system. After a preliminary ruling, the Court of Justice had held that the directive was not invalid in light of the principle of equal treatment. The litigation therefore concerned the very architecture of the regulatory cost imposed on the steel industry.^[35] NGO criticism very early interpreted this type of action as part of a broader normative battle. In a 2011 document, Greenpeace presented ArcelorMittal as one of the most active actors in opposing a strengthening of European climate targets, highlighting both the use of sectoral influence channels and judicial challenges to ETS rules. This source should be read for what it is—a militant position—but it sheds light on external perceptions of the group in the arena of the war of norms.^[36] This case is decisive because it shows that lawfare does not target only the application of a rule; it can target the rule itself. Challenging a transposition decree is an attempt to act on the cost structure of an entire sector. Even when the action fails, it produces effects of learning, signaling, and positioning. It shows that the norm will not be absorbed passively. In sectors where competitiveness depends on the design of the carbon market, the legal battle is also a battle over the architecture of Europe’s political economy. ^[37]

9. Cross-cutting economic intelligence reading

The cases studied make it possible to identify at least six functions of law in ArcelorMittal’s industrial strategy:

• An operational shield, visible in Fos-sur-Mer or Taranto, when the aim is to suspend or contain a closure measure.
• A lever for negotiation with the State, evident in Dunkirk on decarbonization and in Taranto on liability.
• An offensive acquisition tool, as in the Essar Steel case.
• An instrument for securing inputs, as in India.
• A pathway for challenging the general economic rule, as with the ETS.
• A filter of procedural attrition in asymmetric intellectual property conflicts, as in the TDI case.^[38]

Control of judicial tempo is probably the most decisive element. In Fos, six years separate the initial complaint from the formal investigation. In Dunkirk, the public announcement of massive support precedes by many months the final investment decisions, themselves conditioned by changes in the European framework. In Taranto, the litigation cycle stretches from 2019 to 2026. In the TDI case, more than a decade elapses between the initial summons and the first-instance judgment. Yet in the real economy, a few months or a few years can be enough to shift value, change a market price, drain cash reserves, undermine a project, or save a production line. ^[39]

A second constant is informational asymmetry. In Fos, the conflict concerns how to count emissions and aggregate exceedances. In Dunkirk, it shifts toward highly specialized technical benchmarks. In TDI, it rests on fine-grained interpretation of patent claims and technical differences between products. In all cases, control of technical evidence favors the better-resourced party. Legal warfare also becomes a war of metrology, vocabulary, and expert pedagogy. ^[40]

The third dimension is influence. Ifri recalls that law can create or destroy legitimacy. ArcelorMittal emphasizes investment, emissions reductions, employment, industrial sovereignty, and competitiveness. NGOs and investigative media highlight exceedances, complaints, health studies, weak counterparts, or the vulnerability of small innovative structures. Litigation is therefore never only a clash of briefs and submissions; it is also a struggle over the public framing of the case. ^[41]

The fourth dimension is the functional neutralization of opponents. The sources consulted do not allow one to assert that ArcelorMittal initiated, in the cases studied here, SLAPPs in the technical sense of European law against NGOs or journalists. They do, however, show that a local authority, an administrative body, a residents’ association, or an SME can find itself locked into arenas that are slower, more technical, and more costly than the initial conflict. Without necessarily “silencing” the adversary, procedure can reduce its effective capacity to act and transform the intensity of the balance of power. ^[42]

10. Limits and checks and balances

The first check is the judge itself. Courts do not act as mere corporate auxiliaries. The Marseille administrative court suspended the immediate closure in Fos in 2023, but the Conseil d’État dismissed in 2009 Arcelor’s challenge to the transposition of the ETS. In Italy, the Council of State allowed production to continue in Taranto in 2021, while the Court of Justice of the Union recalled in 2024 that operations must be suspended if they seriously threaten the environment and health. In the TDI case, the court dismissed the SME’s claims, facing a multinational far better equipped. ^[43]

The second check is civic and media mobilization. In Fos, the 2018 complaint brought together local residents, trade unions, and associations; the national press and investigative media played a decisive role in making technical information available that is difficult to access in ordinary public debate. In climate and vigilance cases, NGOs such as Réseau Action Climat, Sherpa, Greenpeace, or France Nature Environnement have produced materials that help partially reduce the informational advantage of large groups. ^[44]

The third check is institutional. In January 2024, the Paris Court of Appeal created a chamber dedicated to emerging duty of vigilance and ecological liability litigation. At the European level, the Council adopted the anti-SLAPP rules in March 2024, notably enabling early dismissal of manifestly unfounded or abusive claims and better protection for journalists and rights defenders. These instruments do not directly address all the cases studied here, but they reflect an awareness of procedural imbalances in disputes with high public stakes.^[45] These checks nevertheless remain unequal. The Cour des comptes calls for strengthening the resources of inspections for classified installations and the effectiveness of sanctions. The universe to be monitored remains immense, cases become more technical, and conflicts more costly. As long as this gap persists, the best-resourced actors will retain a greater capacity to govern time, evidence, and rules. The rule of law sets boundaries; it does not spontaneously abolish asymmetry of means^.[46]

Conclusion

The ArcelorMittal case allows neither militant simplification nor procedural naïveté. It does not support the claim that every action by the group is abusive, nor that a unified illegal strategy of predation has been judicially proven. It does, however, powerfully show that a multinational can treat law as an infrastructure of industrial power.

In Fos, it protects continuity of operations; in Dunkirk, it conditions investment profitability; in Taranto, it serves to renegotiate the liabilities of a toxic asset; in India, it opens and secures a growth trajectory; in the ETS, it targets the very framework of competition; in the TDI case, it reveals how differently the duration and cost of procedure weigh on an SME and on a globalized group.^[47]

In contemporary steelmaking, power is not played out only in blast furnaces, ports, energy contracts, or supply chains. It is also played out in interim relief proceedings, appeals, specialized offices, State aid, carbon mechanisms, and intellectual property disputes. Law is no longer merely the backdrop to industrial competition; it is one of its central theatres. It is precisely here that economic intelligence finds its object: where the norm becomes a resource, and where mastery of litigation becomes a component of industrial strategy. ^[48]

Part one: The IE Chronicles – ArcelorMittal, or economic intelligence as a weapon of predation

Part two: The IE-2 Chronicles: ArcelorMittal and the strategy of industrial blackmail