Geopolitical Europe: reshaping identities and conflicts on EU borders

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• GGP: Global Governance Programme

The Russian war in Ukraine, as well as a potential second Trump presidency in the United States, are leading European policymakers to reconstruct the EU’s external relations along geopolitical lines.

This seminar will discuss the implications of this process for the structure of the EU’s external borders and the conflicts between member and non-member states.

First, a conceptual framework analysing the structures of borders of regional organisations along the dimensions of malleability, hierarchy, and modality will be introduced. Second, the effects of different border forms on the identities of the Self and the Other, and on the conflicts between them, will be theorised. Third, these theorised effects of different border forms will be demonstrated through the case of EU–Turkey relations and the Cyprus conflict in the post-Cold War period.

The seminar will conclude with proposals on how a more geopolitical Europe could structure its external borders to avoid aggravating conflicts between member and non-member states.

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