AD 2021: The Future of Europe in the Post-Covid Geopolitical Arena

November 30, 2021

When assuming office in 2019, Ursula von der Leyen vowed to be the leader of a “geopolitical commission”, hence apparently marking a turn in the way the European Union (EU) was presenting itself to the rest of the world. Indeed, putting geopolitics at the center of the European Commission’s agenda implied endorsing the role of global player in an international arena marked by intensified competition between rival power centers. The von der Leyen commission thus affirmed its desire to see the EU act both as an innovative and competitive economic actor with a particular emphasis on the green and digital “twin transformations” and as a more active and responsible geopolitical agent willing to engage with the global South, particularly in the Mediterranean and Africa, and supporting a rules-based multinational order to tackle common issues of global relevance. These ambitions were regularly stated in the communications and strategies produced by the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS). About two years after covid-19 first erupted, this session will aim at evaluating the von der Leyen’s performance as a “geopolitical commission”. Has Europe achieved to be rebalance its relations with China, for instance in terms of better protecting its companies’ intellectual property and ensuring better access to Chinese public markets? How probable is it that Europe will manage to enforce common industrial, innovation and digital strategies to reinforce its position worldwide in these matters? How likely is it that the EU can achieve the “strategic autonomy” that it has been seeking these past few years, notably in view of the United States’ and NATO’s preeminence in strategic and military issues? In light of the divisions pitting EU Member States against each other, has the EU actually managed to be perceived as a serious geopolitical actor by other power centers (in Africa, Asia and the Middle East)? Can the current Commission succeed where the previous ones seem to have largely failed in the Neighborhood and Africa? How successful has the Commission been as a promoter of multilateralism worldwide? Moderator: Ivan Martin, Senior Fellow, Policy Center for the New South Speakers: - Thomas Gomart, Director, French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), France - Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo, President, NATO Defense College Foundation, Italy

Speakers
Iván Martín
Senior Fellow
Iván Martín is Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Governance, Economic and Social Sciences of the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), and Associate Researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Immigration (GRITIM) at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Between 2013 and 2016 he was Part-time Professor at the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the European University Institute in Florence, as well as member of the Expert Group on Economic Migration of the European Commission and Key Expert on Labour Migration providing External Technical Expertise on Migration to DG DEVCO of the European Commission (ETEM V Project). Formerly, he has been Senior Research Fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International A ...
Thomas Gomart
Directeur de l’Institut Français des Relations Internationales
Directeur de l’Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Thomas Gomart était aussi Marie Curie Fellow au Department of War Studies du King’s College (2003-2004), Visiting Fellow à l’Institut d’études de sécurité de l’Union européenne (2003), chercheur associé à l’Ifri (2002-2003), Lavoisier Fellow à l’Institut d’Etat des relations internationales de Moscou (2001). Thomas Gomart est docteur en histoire des relations internationales (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) et diplômé EMBA (HEC Paris). Il a été directeur du développement stratégique de l'Ifri de septembre 2010 à mars 2015 et a créé le Centre Russie/NEI dont il a été le directeur de 2004 à 2013. ...

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