European Foreign Policy Think Tanks and ‘Strategic Autonomy’: Making Sense of the EU’s Role in the World of Geoeconomics

Veselinovič, Jaša

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-01968-5_4

Cited by 18 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…The concept of strategic autonomy itself has its origins in (French) security and defence policy(Lefebvre, 2021, p. 8, Interview 5) and made its way to Europe through the two channels of security concerns and French influence(Lavery et al, 2022). The concept appears in the 2016 Global Strategy but was only later pushed and broadened chiefly by think tanks(Veselinovič, 2022) and the European External Action Service, which played an important role in 'enlarging the concept [of strategic autonomy] beyond the classic French conception' to include economic and technological matters as wellwith the goal to 'give the EU, not just the Commission, a geopolitical dimension' (Interview 3).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

As Open as Possible, as Autonomous as Necessary: Understanding the Rise of Open Strategic Autonomy in EU Trade Policy

Schmitz

Seidl

2022

J of Common Market Studies

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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.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

As Open as Possible, as Autonomous as Necessary: Understanding the Rise of Open Strategic Autonomy in EU Trade Policy

Schmitz

Seidl

2022

J of Common Market Studies

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“…The following section focuses mostly on the conceptualizations put forward by European think-tanks after 2016, it also links these conceptualizations with valuable scientific contributions where they share an interest in particular interpretation or understanding of ESA. The positive role of think-tanks in shaping the European foreign policy has been recently demonstrated in studies on ESA and think-tanks (Veselinovič, 2022). It has also been confirmed during interviews that contribution from European think-tanks is relevant for work on ESA by researchers and policy advisors in the EU institutions (European Parliament..., interview 7.06.2023;European External Action Service, interview 14.04.2023).…”

Section: Defining European Strategic Autonomymentioning

confidence: 73%

Conceptualizing European Strategic Autonomy

Rekowski

2023

10.14746/rie

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Since the Global Strategy of 2016 which presented European Strategic Autonomy (ESA) a global “ambition” of the European Union, the concept of ESA became increasingly embedded in the EU policymaking. However, its meaning remains elusive due to a plurality of competing definitions and interpretations. The aim of this article is to show and analyse how the concept of European Strategic Autonomy is being defined and to verify the hypothesis: despite many competing conceptualizations of ESA, a common understanding of the notion is emerging in the EU. It traces how the concept of ESA is received and evolves in relation to European think-tanks and EU institutions. The research behind this article is based on an extensive review of academic literature, think-tank publications and official EU documents, as well as interviews conducted with EU officials and members of the European think-tank community.

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“…Some critically dissect how the EU justifies its geopolitical turn in trade policy discursively by contrasting it with presumably "bad" geopolitical trade actors and its own previous "naïve" normative trade discourse (Couvreur et al, 2022). Others unpack the role of think tanks in contributing to the geoeconomic turn by facilitating an "ideas shift" (Schmitz & Seidl, 2023;Veselinovič, 2022).…”

Section: The Geoeconomic Turn and The Eu's Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

The Geoeconomic Turn in EU Trade and Investment Policy: Implications for Developing Countries

Weinhardt,

De Ville

2024

PaG

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The so-called geoeconomic turn in global trade policy-making has changed the context in which the European Union positions itself as a trade actor. However, there is little scholarly attention paid to how the geoeconomic turn affects the EU’s relations with developing countries. This article analyses the potential implications of new EU autonomous trade and investment instruments for developing countries, and how the EU has taken these consequences into account when designing them. We rely on a combination of desk research of official documents, trade data, and secondary literature complemented with expert interviews. We find that a trade-off between geoeconomic and development objectives is more pertinent in sustainability-related than in competitiveness- and security-oriented instruments. In these sustainability instruments, differential treatment of developing countries rarely features in the design—despite some proposals having been made. The geoeconomic turn has thus made it more difficult to align the different objectives in the EU’s trade and investment policies, and development concerns are sometimes relegated to the background.

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European Foreign Policy Think Tanks and ‘Strategic Autonomy’: Making Sense of the EU’s Role in the World of Geoeconomics

Cited by 18 publications

References 58 publications

As Open as Possible, as Autonomous as Necessary: Understanding the Rise of Open Strategic Autonomy in EU Trade Policy

As Open as Possible, as Autonomous as Necessary: Understanding the Rise of Open Strategic Autonomy in EU Trade Policy

Conceptualizing European Strategic Autonomy

The Geoeconomic Turn in EU Trade and Investment Policy: Implications for Developing Countries

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