With the notion of a sovereign Europe becoming increasingly popular, this seminar will analyse the concept of European sovereignty in relation to both current and historical geopolitical developments.
While the question of a European state is not new, it has rarely been construed in terms of sovereignty. Federalism or governance were more likely to describe the transfer of power to Brussels. In French, Europe puissance was sometimes used to refer to the EU’s strategic ambitions, and Ursula von der Leyen later coined the term geopolitical Europe. The notion of sovereignty seemed reserved for member states and for the nationalist Eurosceptic movements they harboured.
Since the mid-2010s, however, there has been significant growth in the public use of the term sovereignty in reference to Europe. While, in its national usage, sovereignty often refers to political sovereignty, when applied to Europe it is most often used to denote the more specific economic (technological/trade) and strategic (diplomatic/military) dimensions. The assumption is that political sovereignty remains vested in the member states, but that these states can pool it on the basis of common interests. Concretely, this means:
- The ability to protect their capacity to regulate the common market and promote the competitiveness of their firms in a context of geoeconomic tension;
- The ability to protect their territory from foreign interference and to project influence in the world.
This talk proposes a genealogy of European sovereignty. It focuses on the battle of ideas among Atlanticists, Europeanists, and Nationalists. Analysing this decade-long struggle is key to understanding why European sovereignty has become a fashionable concept of late, one with tangible consequences and prospects, but not necessarily a dominant or stable one yet.
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