On October 24-25, 2024, Prof. Sophie Vanhoonacker, Maastricht University, attended an international workshop on ‘European Integration in the Geopolitical Age’ organized at the Centrum für Angewandte Politikforschung (CAP) in Munich.
The workshop, brought together different contributors to a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy edited by Christian Freudlesperger, ETH Zurich and Lucas Schramm, LMU Munich. The central focus of the SI is on how the EU is dealing with the many challenges coming from the outside world and why it chooses different institutional and policy responses to cope with them.
Sophie Vanhoonacker presented a paper, co-authored with Céleste Bonnamy (Sciences Po Lille), Thomas Christiansen (LUISS Rome), Flavia Lucenti (LUISS Rome) and Ville Sinkkonen (FIIA) on ‘The Geopolitics of Strategic Technology Governance: The European Union’s Evolving Approach in the Global Context’.
Against the rapidly changing international context, the paper examines how the EU’s evolving approach to the governance of key digital technologies has evolved. It examines the shift that has been detected in the EU’s approach from promoting openness, liberalized trade and global competition to a neo-mercantilist attitude that involves fostering ‘European digital champions’, protecting the European market and restricting access for, and reliance on, external rivals, primarily from the US and China. The paper examines these claims through an empirical analysis of two dominant and potentially rival discourses which the EU has been pursuing over the past decade to underpin its policy-making in response to geoeconomic developments. On one hand, there has been a discourse about “connectivity”, advocating for the inclusion and collaboration with other market players regardless of their origin, reflecting a liberal view of globalization regulation. On the other hand, there is the “strategic autonomy” narrative, promoting inter alia the development of strong EU digital industries, the diversification of critical supplies and the relocation of value chains within EU territory, reflecting a more defensive approach to globalisation. Empirically the paper examines the prominence of each of these two narratives with regard to digital policy initiatives launched by the EU in the period between 2019 and 2024 – the first term of the self-declared “geopolitical” European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen.
By comparing these distinct narratives, the paper aims to address a number of critical research questions: first, if and how the EU’s dual strategies towards connectivity and strategic autonomy can be reconciled – in other words, whether the key concepts such as “Open Strategic Autonomy” and “An Open, Sustainable and Assertive Trade Policy” which have emerged in the EU’s discourse in recent years are either sustainable, or contradictory, or instead are simply indicative of a transition from one paradigm to another; second, how the EU has positioned itself internationally, specifically vis-à-vis China and the US; and third, to what extent the EU’s response to externalized interdependence has been, on balance, rather more unifying or more divisive with respect to the configuration of member states’ interests.