Diplomatic Realisation of the EU’s “Geoeconomic Pivot”: Sanctions, Trade, and Development Policy Reform

Abstract

At a time when policymakers of the European Union (EU) are pivoting towards a more assertive use of economic power in external relations, this article discusses the merits of situating the much-debated use of economic sanctions and other economic power-based instruments in the broader terminology of EU diplomatic capabilities. Pointing out a number of shortcomings in traditional literature on geoeconomics and economic statecraft, the article applies the concept of “geoeconomic diplomacy” to demonstrate how the EU’s geoeconomic success will heavily depend on the abilities of diplomats and civil servants from institutions and member states to engage in viable relationships with relevant public and private actors in the state-market realm. Based hereon, it identifies institutional and context-specific challenges that could affect the comprehensive realisation of recent EU policy reforms relevant to the geoeconomic agenda: (a) institutional measures to ensure a more robust enforcement of sanctions, (b) a new anti-coercion instrument to counter coercive trade practices by third countries, and (c) a more efficient, focused, and strategic utilisation of EU development funds for purposes of stability and peace. The article concludes by discussing the prospects for bringing such instruments closer together at the level of practical implementation through the establishment of stronger relationships between practitioners working across the EU’s various geoeconomic intervention areas.

A ‘Geopolitical Commission’: Supranationalism Meets Global Power Competition

“…In addition, the mobilisation of economic instruments for strategic purposes can generate tensions between conflicting economic and security interests, as demonstrated by the debates surrounding the concept of 'open strategic autonomy' amongst the Commission's DGs and amongst member states. These findings are in line with recent studies highlighting the internal conditions and obstacles to the implementation of a geoeconomic strategy (Olsen, 2022).…”

Geoeconomic Power Europe: When Global Power Competition Drives EU Integration

“…As for the instrument‐based dynamic, it allows the Commission to rely on its economic instruments to strengthen its role in policy areas, such as security and defence, that were previously largely out of its reach. It is likely to generate tensions between those actors traditionally specialised in the definition of strategic policies and those specialised in the management of EU economic instruments, which can feed inter‐institutional competition between the Commission on the one hand and the European External Action Service (EEAS) (Olsen, 2022a, p. 11) and European Defence Agency on the other (Haroche, 2020).…”

“…In this article, I propose a theoretical response to Herranz‐Surrallés et al's (2024) ambition of exploring the ‘geoeconomic turn’ of the European Union's (EU's) single market and external economic policies by not only highlighting it but also analysing its implications at the international and EU internal levels. The rapidly growing literature on the EU geoeconomic turn has mainly focused on policy recommendations (Jaeger, 2022; Leonard et al, 2019) or on reviewing recent EU policy initiatives (Biscop et al, 2022; Castro Ribeiro, 2023; Gehrke, 2022; Helwig and Wigell, 2022; Murad, 2021; Olsen, 2022a; Weinhardt et al, 2022). I go a step further by introducing the concept of ‘geoeconomic power Europe’ to show how this development has the potential to renew debates on the nature of EU power.…”

Commerce and Security Meet in the European Union’s Trade Defence Instruments

“…This article assesses the interaction and increasing overlap of these two rather distinct policy fields through the assessment of new trade defence instruments (TDIs), contributing to the literature on the transformation of the EU's common commercial policy and economic security. There is an emerging literature addressing the application of commercial and economic policy instruments in conjunction with instruments traditionally applied through foreign and security policies, such as sanctions (e.g., Adriaensen & Postnikov, 2022;Olsen, 2022;Schild & Schmid, in press;Schmitz & Seidl, 2023). However, there are continued calls for "a more thorough academic and intellectual debate about the intersection of economics, security, and geopolitics" (Hellendoorn, 2023).…”