A “Geopolitical Commission”: Reaching a Point of Inflexion?

Abstract

Mid-way through the mandate of the von der Leyen Commission, this Chapter explores the definition of and delivery on a “geopolitical Commission” narrative. The term was coined by the President-elect when presenting her would-be College to the European Parliament for its consent vote. The Chapter starts by arguing that such narrative was functional to a “legitimacy by power” approach, linking the Commission’s authority, in the absence of a Spitzenkandidat procedure, to its effective delivery of global leverage. On this basis, we challenge the idea that the Commission has so far failed to deliver on its “geopolitical” ambition. In fact, by assessing it in terms of “open strategic autonomy”, emerged as a cross-cutting strategic response to a set of interlinked megatrends whereby “geopolitics starts at home”, the evidence points to: (i) a positive track record of delivery—starting the Commission’s front-runner role in the global vaccine race and recovery strategy; and (ii) a noticeable inflection point towards increased awareness of the need for more assertiveness and coherence between domestic and external policy agendas. We conclude that the Commission’s geopolitical leadership should increasingly become a strategic foresight leadership, leveraging its unique role as system integrator and coalition builder to collectively reach long-term goals, while challenging the status quo and telling inconvenient truths when needed.

The views expressed in this document are solely those of the authors and do not represent the official views of the European Commission. Like all other chapters, the present one was finalised well before the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. These events have substantially altered the world we live in, especially from a geopolitical viewpoint. Still, we are convinced that—even if not specifically mentioned in the below chapter—the EU’s response to this conflict confirms and epitomises the main conclusions of the chapter. In particular, the Russian war against Ukraine can be argued to have played the role of “point of inflexion”, in so far as it drastically accelerates the described path towards a truly “geopolitical Commission”. As a matter of fact, while it can be argued that such process is—as much as the war itself—not yet concluded, numerous signals point to the below-mentioned structural discontinuity in the way the Commission considers the geopolitical tools at its disposal and their best use. De facto, the predicted “course towards greater geopolitical assertiveness [and] virtuous circle of positive spillovers in hard security areas” seems to now be largely taking place as a collective response to the ongoing war. Examples range from short-term measures—the unprecedented scale and speed of the comprehensive packages of sanctions adopted against Moscow, the intense diplomatic outreach and coordination (e.g. G7/NATO), financing and coordinating the sending of weapons to Ukraine—to more medium-to-long term objectives such as the EU’s energy security, deeply intertwined with achieving the twin transitions, the reconstruction of Ukraine, and the new enlargement policy vis-à-vis Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. All these aspects will be analysed in a forthcoming article by the authors (2023).