The administrative function of strategic supervision is a manifestation of the Zeitgeist that informs the current global economic order. This changing order is characterised by the increasing repoliticisation of the economy, in contrast to the tendency promoted by the neo-liberal agenda and driven by the European integration process to disentangle politics from economics. Against this background, this paper attempts to identify the legal proprium of strategic supervision for security reasons through a comparison with the regulatory function, an expression of the theoretical paradigm of the regulatory state long at the heart of the European economic constitution. The conceptualisation of an autonomous function endowed with its own purposes, competences, attributions, and addressees lays the groundwork for analysing the functional and normative implications of Europeanisation on strategic supervision, now exercised by domestic public powers within a Europeanised regulatory space.