The 2008 financial crisis, the Covid-19 crisis and the ongoing US-China trade war have put into question the liberal assumption that multilateralism and economic interdependence have the capacity to guarantee prosperity and peace.[1] At the same time, these very processes are being upheld as a bulwark against climate change. In Europe, the need to band together to fight global warming, on the one hand, and the desire to give the EU the tools to assert its values in an increasingly harsh world,[2] on the other, have underpinned two of the von der Leyen Commission’s major priorities: the European Green Deal and the idea of a Geopolitical Commission.[3]
While the former refers to a concrete action plan to make Europe carbon-neutral by 2050, the latter relates to something harder to pin down: the EU’s ambition to be more strategic, more assertive and more united. Accordingly, the Green Deal’s progress, or lack thereof, is easy to measure: one need only look at the evolution of greenhouse gas emissions. It is more difficult to calculate the successes or failures of the von der Leyen Commission to act “geopolitically” because the strategic autonomy which it strives for has no clear definition.
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[1]https://www.gvsu.edu/cms4/asset/54A33349-DDB5-9122-52D039391EF8BB6C/rousseau_walker_liberalism_10.pdf
[2]https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/89865/why-european-strategic-autonomy-matters_en
[3]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/646148/EPRS_BRI(2020)646148_EN.pdf
