“Europe will be forged in crisis and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises”— Jean Monnet.
The last decade has seen great geopolitical challenges, from ‘Brexit’ to the COVID-19 Pandemic to the wholescale Russian invasion of Ukraine and beyond. With these arguably seismic events, the role of states, transnational bodies, and the international order takes centre stage. It is these questions that grounded the City Law School Institute for the Study of European Law (ISEL) Annual lecture on 10 July entitled ‘The EU and the Current Geopolitical Challenges’. Featuring a lecture by two-term former President of the European Commission and former Portuguese Prime Minister José Manuel Barroso, followed by a panel with Professors Panos Koutrakos and Elaine Fahey, chaired by Christopher Vajda KC, former Judge at the European Court of Justice; the Event aimed to provide insight into the unique role the European Union currently occupies vis-à-vis these ongoing geopolitical challenges and its potential role in a rapidly changing international order.
Barroso’s lecture used insight from his previous role as president of the European Commission and his current role as chair of Global Vaccine alliance ‘GAVI’ to highlight the challenges currently facing the international order and the place that the EU operates and the strength of unity arising from its response to these crises. He presented his thesis behind the lecture, stating that he believes the EU is going to make more progress in its identity insofar is the EU is moving from “geopolitical adolescence” to becoming a “geopolitical adult”. He began by positing that the power behind the international order was based in the US and Europe after the Second World War, but that this international order is in the process of changing. Barroso cited the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in March 2022 as a historic moment that has turned the tide for the EU, claiming that it is unlikely the world will come to a status quo ante.
He furthered argued that the key narratives underlining this shift is the change in the US’s standing with the Trump Presidency in tandem with the rise of China as a competing economic and political power, where formerly the power was firmly in the camp of the US, the EU, and the UK. He also touched on the developments some have pointed to as a tension between the Global North and the Global South. Though he argued that the EU is not completely coherent nor a state, he used several examples to underline the importance of the EU as an organisation and the manner in which it is forming greater unity to fulfil one of Jean Monnet’s key aims. To support his thesis, Barroso underlined that previous EU policies were from a technocratic view but that now it is making its economic policies through the lens of geopolitical and security considerations. He used examples such as the strengthening of NATO in the aftermath of the wholescale Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Sweden and Finland joining as well as Denmark’s referendum decision to join European Defence.
Much like the Jean Monnet quote above he ended his lecture with, Barroso concluded that the EU is on the precipice of developing and becoming more cohesive. He pointed to the now 27 state European voting bloc at the UN as a marvel, with the level of EU influence seen in the fact that even candidate EU states also try to vote with the EU bloc at the United Nation. Concluding that EU cohesion is even more necessary in the face of a potential second Trump presidency and increase in Chinese economic and geopolitical power.
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