Foreign policy / EPC FLASH ANALYSIS Today’s Gymnich menu: Russia for lunch; China for afternoon tea When EU ministers for foreign affairs meet today in Sweden, they have a full
menu: Russia and its aggression on Ukraine for lunch; EU-China relations for the afternoon tea or coffee. While there is greater convergence and unity on how Brussels and the EU27 should respond to Moscow’s armed geopolitical revisionism, future relations with Beijing are harder to digest. Clearly, there has been a gradual European hardening on China over the last few years, but the several dimensions and layers of EU-China ties make it a much harder challenge to address in a fully coherent and coordinated way.
Hence, it should not come as a surprise if what comes out of the informal Gymnich meeting is a sharper reiteration of current China as a ‘partner,’ ‘competitor,’ and ‘rival’ policy. Commission President von der Leyen’s ‘de-risking-not-decoupling’ compass is also likely to feature high, but the basic tenets of the EU’s China strategy are unlikely to change fundamentally. Besides, calling China a ‘rival’ is already a sunk diplomatic cost: Beijing rejects that characterisation, and unless the EU scraps the term altogether, it is pointless for policymakers to devise a synonym that is likely to equally annoy the Chinese.
China and Russia are on today’s menu, but they are not the only countries with which the EU needs to grapple with. Apart from these two big players, a key relationship is the one with the United States. Although transatlantic relations are presently on a better path despite known irritants, 2024 may take the two sides of the Atlantic back to the future if Mr Trump or a Trumpian candidate is elected. Before the upcoming election cycle starts, the EU and the US should rapidly set up ‘transatlantic guardrails’ to keep the relationship on track irrespective of the outcome of the US presidential elections.
As the world becomes geopolitically more fragmented and competitive, the EU needs to think more deliberately about its global relations and devise a policy of ‘strategic diversification’ across all policy areas, also assessing and mapping countries that can advance or hinder the objectives of the Union, from economic security and military defence to the green and digital transitions. This represents a large swath of nations worldwide – like-minded and not. Indeed, ‘strategic diversification’ would allow the EU, in the long-term, to act autonomously when it needs to do so to defend or advance its values or interests and in partnership when its aims are better served by acting together with other countries that share the same values and/or interests.
EU autonomy through diversification may be better than pursuing the current ambivalent path that risks alienating friends and competitors. Maybe ministers can have ‘strategic diversification’ with brännvin for a nightcap?
P.S. – President Macron’s “
Made in Europe” doctrine published today in the media is also a good weekend reading.
Today’s Gymnich menu: Russia for lunch; China for afternoon tea 12 May 2023 - ,