Since December 2019, the European Union has defined itself and the wider continent as “geopolitics”. The European Commission’s weapons have been renamed, ostensibly to propel the continent – including countries that are not members of the EU – to become a global geopolitical power, from energy, research and education to trade and finance.
One of the greatest early proponents of the vision of a “geopolitical Europe” was the French president Emmanuel Macron.
A central part of that vision is Macron’s idea of a European Political Community (EPC), encompassing the EU’s 27 countries and 17 neighbors – some of whom want to join the EU, including Ukraine and Turkey, and others, such as Britain, who have left the EU. It.
However, the reality of what at first glance looks like an enlargement policy is rather disappointing. The second EPC meeting, held in Moldova on 1 June 2023, was an opportunity to reiterate support for Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, while North Macedonia, an EU candidate for 18 years, was promised that it will finally join the Union – by 2030. This is far too slow and careless given Russia’s growing influence in North Macedonia.
Ultimately, the EPC sounds and looks like a pompous name for a series of international events, conferences, cultural festivals and gatherings of leaders from the 44 participating countries. It is not a single entity, but a platform for this “community” to meet. To expect anything more from this initiative would be as naive as to expect that the EU’s investment and financing programs alone would meaningfully boost Europe’s “global competitiveness”.
To understand why, look no further than the European research area (ERA), an initiative that aims to integrate the EU’s scientific resources. The strategic document provides a roadmap for achieving geopolitical relevance through “technological competitiveness”.
The document underlines how innovation, economic growth based on technological competitiveness and global geopolitical relevance are inextricably linked. The ambition is clear: to become an independent competitor of China and the United States, but also of the rest of the emerging world powers in the field of technological innovation, digitization and green energy.
Yet the results, at least so far, are again disappointing: technocracy, bureaucracy, and supposed expert (academic) oversight are delaying any attempt to become a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. The EU lags far behind the US and China in tangibly transforming itself into a competitive geopolitical player by building an innovation-based economy.
Bold ideas and research plans are dragged down and suffocated by review panels that seek to write NGO-style project proposals and follow the grant-awarding models from the golden age of neoliberalism in the 1990s. Ambitious proposals under the EU’s leading innovation initiatives are considered unrealistic. This fosters a research environment that completely lacks the go-getter approach of the EU’s global competitors.
Unless all this changes, the idea of a geopolitical Europe driven by research and development will remain stillborn.
Currently, project proposals are scored through a technocratic process that takes almost a year on average. And at the end of that tedious process of seeking funding, the money on the table is also far from competitive: the European Commission invested €100 billion in research and innovation for 2021-27, under the US, China and even multinationals like Amazon.
All talk of a geopolitical Europe will remain toothless if the political community it is trying to build is an NGO-style platform to meet, greet and talk – rather than a political force and legal entity that unites the Union and effectively transform the commission into a world power.
If it remains a club that a country can join or leave, it is neither political nor geopolitical. Geopolitics is territorially determined; it requires citizenship that can identify with a social and political system – the imagined political community.
Likewise, competition through innovation must be carried on at an ever-increasing pace, where an idea that can transform reality is not knocked down by the fallacies of technocrats and ivory tower professors, apart from the stormy speed of global transformation. Without it, the ambition to compete with Silicon Valley or China is a joke.
In other words, the “geopolitical commission” is just a dream imploding under the weight of the EU’s suffocating technocratic grip on the continent’s social, economic and territorial realities.
If Europe is to compete – in geopolitics and technology – the technocrats must take a step back.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.