For decades, the EU's trade policy has been centred around open(ing) markets. Why, then, has the EU recently embraced open strategic autonomy as the conceptual cornerstone of its renewed trade policy? In this article, we argue that this move away from neoliberalism has to be understood against the background of a changing global environment. The geopoliticization of trade in particular has changed the Commission's view about how to best serve European interests (and values) but also provided an opening for neo-mercantilist and socially oriented actors to challenge Europe's embedded neoliberal compromise. Using document analysis, interviews and discourse network analysis, we show how the Commission used open strategic autonomy as a coalition magnet to mobilize support for its new doctrine of qualified openness. Our paper contributes to understanding the ideational and coalitional politics behind the recent evolution of EU trade policy as well as broader debates around European autonomy and sovereignty.

In recent years, the EU has reformulated its trade and digital policies under the banners of open strategic autonomy and digital sovereignty, respectively. The existing literature has only begun to explain this departure from the market-centered and efficiency-oriented rhetoric that has dominated European policymaking for the last decades. In this paper, we argue that the discursive turn towards autonomy and sovereignty is part of a larger recasting of the European project, which we understand as the evolving compromise between a neoliberal, a neo-mercantilist, and a socially-oriented faction. Through a combination of document analysis, interviews, and discourse network analysis, we show that a changing global environment has provided an opening to challenge the existing, neoliberally dominated consensus. We further show how open strategic autonomy and digital sovereignty are used as coalition magnets in mobilizing support for a more assertive, capable, and interventionist Europe able to protect and promote its interests and values in an increasingly digitalized and geopoliticized world.

No abstract

Over the past decade, the external policy of the European Commission has become increasingly entangled by the notion of policy coherence. Previously 'siloed' policy areas such as trade, agriculture, and development are increasingly approached as challenges only effectively resolved by addressing their positive and negative interlinkages. While the EC is critical of fundamental incoherencies between different policy areas, it simultaneously calls to harness synergies between them. To explain this ambiguous approach, we combine insights from speech act theory and cultural political economy. We aim for methodological triangulation by employing an explanatory narrative, social network analysis, and expert interviews. We argue that the Commission's approach towards coherence can be understood as an attempt to reshape the actor landscape around the discourse on coherence. By gradually pushing out the most outspoken actors, the Commission seeks to discursively resolve the inherent contradictions of reconciling free trade and development of the Global South.

No abstract