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Europe on a Power Trip Episode
9 November 2020
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
autonomy, strategic, europe, eu, european, china, unanimity, people, nathalie, french, security, mantra, world, eu foreign policy, countries, brussels, macron, includes, european council, democracies
James Kanter 00:52
Strategic autonomy. It’s become the mantra for European union officials. It started as a broadly French idea: that Europe needs sufficient military power to promote peace and security independent of the United States. But the scope of the mantra has expanded. Nowadays, the term also covers the trade and tech power Europe is seeking to avoid getting squeezed by China and America. That economic focus has Europe’s other big power Germany interested. Our first guest is Nathalie Tocci, who is director of the IAI think tank in Rome and special advisor to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. She’s also the author of the European Global Strategy, the 2016 policy document that gave strategic autonomy its current prominence. Four years on, Nathalie says strategic autonomy should remain a guiding principle, even after Trump leaves the White House. She also says the concept can be used to advance key progressive goals like climate protection. So how did Nathalie become the modern architect of the strategic autonomy concept?
Nathalie Tocci 02:12
I mean, it wasn’t really part of my studies on my background, I mean, you know, beyond the sort of general passion for European foreign policy and the belief that Europe needs to sort of, you know, stand up on its feet when it when it comes to its role in the world. But I do think of myself as being first and foremost a European and then and then everything else, and then an Italian, a Roman and what have you.
James Kanter 02:35
So one of the first times the term strategic autonomy was used by European leaders was December 2013. They were meeting in Brussels as the European Council and the Council used the term in its conclusions on defense and strengthening the defense industry.
Nathalie Tocci 02:52
Yes, it used the term strategic autonomy sort of in passing, I mean, it didn’t define it, didn’t really get into what it meant or what it didn’t mean. But it used the term very much under French impulse. And then that agenda was kind of left lying was never really implemented, and everyone sort of fell back asleep. But I think already by, you know, 2014-2015, attention to security and defense issues started rising again, largely because of, you know, the crumbling European security architecture, the war in Syria, Libya, etc. It seemed to me to be the sort of time and the place to pick up a concept and try and give it sort of real meaning. Then, of course, it became even more pertinent when there was the UK referendum on Brexit. And then there was the election of Donald Trump. So it kind of then generated a momentum that this was an area on which to invest.
James Kanter 03:50
To what degree is strategic autonomy really at its roots, a French idea? And what do you make of the criticism that France is using this mantra of strategic autonomy and Britain’s exit from the EU as a way to kind of try and continue to project its former great power status?
Nathalie Tocci 04:09
I mean, yes, its origins are certainly very French. So the idea of a more interventionist European Union in the world. And the second, perhaps even more pertinent is the sort of defense industrial dimension of strategic autonomy and the prominence of French defense industry. In Europe, sort of underpinning the idea of strategic autonomy, if read through this lens, is basically buy French and buy less American. I mean, I’m slightly caricaturing here the sort of French interest in this concept. Now, neither of these two interpretations I would say is shared across the European Union. So the European Union as such remains certainly rather non-interventionist in nature, and is very careful to define its defense industrial base in a manner that is not protectionist in nature, both because of the close ties that other member states have, not only with the United Kingdom, of course, but also and most importantly, with the United States. But the way in which the concept has developed within the European Union has, I think, de-Frenchized the concept quite significantly, into a much broader concept, which really has the idea that Europeans collectively have the capability and the will to stand up for themselves — do we have the security defense, but also economic, energy, digital, etc, prerequisites that enable us to live by our own laws.
James Kanter 05:48
Is the way the US election playing out, serving to weaken or strengthen the case for European strategic autonomy? After all, one reason why strategic autonomy gained relevance so quickly is because of Donald Trump threatening the Atlantic alliance. And because he supported Britain breaking away from Europe. Joe Biden supports the EU and he’s no Brexiteer.
Nathalie Tocci 06:10
In one respect, of course, it makes our life much, much easier. So we have an ally and a partner back working with us also on this autonomy agenda. Because I think this is a fundamental point, you know, strategic autonomy is not something that is meant to mean that we want to act on our own, I think it’s very much part of the European DNA, acting with others and by others, obviously, the first port of call is always the United States. And it will always be the United States. And of course, the shock has been in recent years that there was not a United States that wanted to act with us. But I think there’s no denying that in other respects, it does make it harder. And you know, there will be some that will believe that with a Biden Administration, we can stick our heads back into the sand, and that we can go back to the good old days in which the United States looked after our security, and we kind of you know, simply exerted our soft power in the world power world has gone. And I think it would be deeply irresponsible of us interpreting a Biden victory in that sense. Also, because let’s not forget that if there is something that these elections in the United States also demonstrate is that beyond Trump’s defeat, Trumpism is still alive and kicking. There is still, you know, a Republican Senate that will, in many respects, tie back the Biden Administration’s hands. And the threats that face us remain the same, you know, and it is simply, as I said, irresponsible to assume that someone else, especially given that that someone else is going to be mainly preoccupied with China, is going to be with us to solve our problems.
James Kanter 07:52
Another element of the relationship with the United States that’s frequently invoked, is the nuclear umbrella. And German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer wants what she calls illusions of European strategic autonomy to come to an end. She sort of suggests that Europeans will never be able to replace America in its role as Europe’s security provider. To what degree do you think President Macron of France is addressing those concerns by, for example, actually looking at ways of guaranteeing European security with its arsenal of nuclear weapons?
Nathalie Tocci 08:27
Well the French arsenal alone of nuclear weapons would probably be insufficient. In this respect, I actually tend to agree with the German defense minister. I do think at the same time that Germany should pick up on the call made by the French president to start discussing this, beginning to Europeanize a nuclear debate rather than just sort of relegating this to a debate that France internally has. The point is that beyond France, and the UK, or elsewhere in the EU, there are very few people that actually know anything about this, for the simple reason that there are very few, that there are no other member states that do have nuclear weapons.
James Kanter 09:12
Given the rise of authoritarianism and illiberalism globally and given the way China remains so hostile to democracy, shouldn’t Europe use the election of Biden to double down on the Atlantic alliance to defend the post 1945 rules-based collaborative world order, you know, to uphold progressive and democratic values at home and abroad?
Nathalie Tocci 09:35
I do think that it’s important for democracies to stick together because perhaps for the first time in post-World War Two history, and I include therefore the Cold War period, it is not and it will not be as obvious as it was that democracy is the worst political system with the exception of all alternatives. Because whereas during the Cold War, I mean I think frankly speaking no one really kind of doubted that it was more pleasant to live in a liberal democracy compared to a Soviet country, I think that the difficulty that as democracies we’ll be facing in the 21st century is that China represents something which we thought could not exist. You know, we’ve been preaching for decades that economic prosperity and political liberalism went hand in hand. And China proves that this is not the case. On top of this, we add the pandemic, and it adds to the suspicion of: is there another governance model that may actually be better at delivering to citizens? Where yes, indeed, rights and freedoms are denied, but there is health and economic prosperity and security which are secured. Now, on a personal level, I don’t buy that. But I don’t think we can sort of hide from the fact that there will be segments within our own populations that will be attracted to that narrative. And I think this is something that we have to deal with and it’s unprecedented in the 21st century. And in order to do so, I think that working together also and therefore helping one another, as democracies, is going to be crucially important.
James Kanter 11:23
Shouldn’t that collective cooperation among democracies include Europe decoupling itself from authoritarian countries like China — decoupling, basically being voguish jargon for trying to make an economy like Europe’s depend as little as possible on China’s. Shouldn’t that be what’s paramount at this time?
Nathalie Tocci 11:44
The decoupling story has to be broken down in its components. I mean, we don’t have an interest in reducing or let alone eliminating interdependences. I mean, maybe because I have a sort of, you know, in a sense a liberal understanding about, about the way the world works. But I do think that interdependencies are a mitigating element of conflict. I mean, they don’t necessarily resolve conflict, but they do mitigate, perhaps some of its more, sort of, most nefarious potential impacts. Yes, I do think that there are sectors, and obviously the digital one is the one that most comes to mind, where we have to ensure that in our relationship with China, China is not allowed to interfere in the porousness of our systems because they are open systems, which means that a degree of decoupling may be necessary.
James Kanter 12:50
Back to Brussels and Paris and Paris, in particular, Brussels and Paris are applying the concept of strategic autonomy that, you know, you played such a role in developing a few years ago, to a lot of other EU priorities beyond the military one. It’s now the rallying cry for major trade and industrial initiatives like this computing network called GAIA-X to resist the dominance of US tech giants. It’s also invoked to support European Investment in batteries and raw materials for the future European electric car industry. There’s talk of an Airbus for artificial intelligence; using trade policy to promote onshoring, near-shoring, shortening supply chains. So should people be concerned that it could now be discredited as protectionism? I mean, it runs the risk of being tarred with that brush.
Nathalie Tocci 13:40
Yeah, I mean, I think that risk is there. But I think the risk is a broader risk. And I come back to the China point. I think that it’s becoming increasingly clear that we will not be able to persuade or to coerce China into leveling up the playing field. You know, we do face unfair practices, what do we do to level the playing field? And this is where the protectionist risk or route comes in. If you’re not going to be able to level up the playing field, then the only way to level it, may be to level it down. You know, to give sort of a concrete example, in the sort of, you know, 5G debate, you know, Huawei versus European Champions a la, you know, Ericsson or Nokia. How do we prevent Huawei from entering Europe on 5G when the costs of telecom networks of allowing 5G are infinitely lower than those of Nokia and Ericsson? And why are they lower? Because Huawei is heavily subsidized. So what do we do about this? And you know, I don’t think this is a sort of black and white answer situation. I think it’s a shades of gray situation. But you know, there is a trade-off between security and openness, which is an old debate, but I think it also plays out specifically in this domain.
James Kanter 15:04
Now, something that’s at the core of your current concerns: the EU still has to make its foreign policy decisions by unanimity. The European Commission, though, and President Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief you advise, would like to change this to a majority vote system. That could help when it comes to taking a firm stance on countries like Russia. But, at the moment, even the Lithuanian foreign minister, whose country is among those that’s most concerned about Russia, wants to stick with consensus and unanimity. So my question, what’s the strategy here for the switchover to unanimity? And do you think it’s possible this can happen within this five-year cycle for the EU institutions?
Nathalie Tocci 15:54
I’d say that as most things when it comes to European integration, steps forward are made in steps. I mean, this is not a sort of one-stop journey. So no, I don’t think that there will be a decision to adopt qualified majority voting on all foreign policy issues this year, next year, or in the next five years for that matter. But I do think that it’s possible to start selecting certain areas where qualified majority voting may be acceptable. One can think of the example that von der Leyen herself raised in her State of the Union address where she mentioned human rights questions.
Ursula von der Leyen 16:40
When member states say, Europe is too slow, I say, be courageous, and finally move to qualified majority voting, at least on human rights and sanctions implementation.
Nathalie Tocci 16:59
Can we agree to go for qualified majority voting on areas like sanctions? Now, probably the Lithuanian foreign minister would be quite happy to sort of move in this direction, rather than having this sort of Damocles sword, you know, every six months, requiring unanimity for a renewal of sanctions on Russia, for instance. Or a third area could be missions and operations. Could we agree that the decision to launch an operation doesn’t require unanimity? And it will always be then up to Malta not to participate in an operation in Libya if it doesn’t want to. But not for that reason would it have to block that operation, for instance. So I think on some of these issues, it is possible I think, to make progress and in the coming years.
James Kanter 18:12
To what degree can and should strategic autonomy be part of promoting alliances with other countries on sustainable energy policy in order to take action on climate change? And to what degree can it be part of efforts to root out corruption and do more to clean up global finance, like ending tax havens and promoting fair wages at home and abroad? Do you see strategic autonomy as being part of that push?
Nathalie Tocci 19:02
Yes, I think this is fundamentally important, because the two sides of the same coin are protection and promotion. So yes, it is about protecting ourselves from interference from others. And that’s one side of it, which has risen in importance — the sort of most shocking aspect has been the fact that this has also been coming from the United States. But then it’s also about protecting ourselves against Russian interference, you know, disinformation campaigns, hybrid tactics of different types. It is also about protecting ourselves from unfair economic practices by China. But I think that we are still in a world in which we also want to promote certain rules and standards. And I think the two examples that you raise are particularly important. I mean let me just focus on the climate one. You know, we’ve been talking a lot about a carbon border adjustment tax. For instance, and this actually can be read through the lens of strategic autonomy. Because ultimately, it is a way of ensuring that within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world, certain standards apply. What we want to make sure happens is that we don’t simply live in our European bubble in which we’re all nice and carbon neutral by 2050. But that we are sort of inspiring and induce others to follow the same path. And so instruments like the carbon border adjustment tax, I think have to be read, both with that internal lens, but also with an external lens, inducing other world regions to have their own Green Deals of different types and tools and for us to assist them cooperate and support them basically, in this endeavor.
James Kanter 20:55
Achieving anything like strategic autonomy in EU foreign policy is going to require big changes in EU decision making. But those changes are unlikely to be needed in the areas of digital policy and high tech industry. And these are the areas where German support for the mantra of strategic autonomy is strongest. Even so, the EU’s 27 member states still hold pretty varied views on the economy and on the bloc’s role in the world. And that also could undermine the goal of strategic autonomy. For our second segment of the show, we welcome back Financial Times Brussels reporter Mehreen Khan. Mehreen talks about the implications of strategic autonomy for Europe’s free traders, for the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, and for the durability of Europe soft power credentials. Mehreen, what’s your mantra? You know, do you have a personal mantra to reach a goal in life?
Mehreen Khan 21:58
Speaking truth to power baby, that’s what it is. Professional and personal. That’s what gets me out of bed every day.
22:06
It’s kind of a journalist’s mantra.
Mehreen Khan 22:08
There you go. And you, what’s your mantra?
22:12
Well, I’m glad you asked that. I did some spiritual work on myself a while back. And mine is, be the squirrel.
Mehreen Khan 22:18
The squirrel. What’s the squirrel?
James Kanter 22:22
I took be the squirrel from the song Little Acorns by the White Stripes. The White Stripes start the song with the voice of a US broadcaster telling the story of a woman who found herself inspired to overcome her problems seeing a squirrel preparing for winter. The idea being that the squirrel stores up nuts, one by one, and by analogy, if we can break our problems into small pieces, we also can deal with them. Just like the squirrel. One at a time
Mehreen Khan 22:48
Very zeitgeisty for the autumn.
James Kanter 22:50
Zeitgeisty for the autumn, yeah. It’s sort of like a cinnamon, it’s sort of the cinnamon latte of philosophy.
Mehreen Khan 22:55
Exactly, yeah. Go find your nuts people.
James Kanter 23:04
What is your top line on whether strategic autonomy is just another mantra for the Eurocracy? You know, just like another one of these phrases that we in the press corps can and should snipe at? Or, you know, is it something that we should take more seriously as something like a guiding principle for the entire continent?
Mehreen Khan 23:23
I mean, the EU is amazing at mantras. This is mantra heaven. You know, the Last Chance Commission.
James Kanter 23:30
Jobs and growth
Mehreen Khan 23:31
Jobs and growth. Growth and jobs. You know, we, it’s the kind of, you know, it’s the place where you know, platitudes just take on a life of their own. Strategic autonomy I think has much more potential. I think one of the reasons it’s more than just a mantra — it’s part of our, or Europe’s, departure from naivety?
James Kanter 23:52
Yeah, it’s sort of directly addressing a weakness at the heart of the project and trying to do something about it. There’s a certain honesty to the question that it raises.
Mehreen Khan 24:01
Yes and the beauty of it is, it’s those two words, put them together, they can mean anything to anyone. And that’s why it has mantra potential, but it also has the potential to become a guiding principle that really affects all parts of the policy world in Brussels.
James Kanter 24:20
I thought it was interesting, and of course, a bit chilling what Nathalie said about China’s relatively strong ability to tame COVID and how this shows how top policymakers are genuinely concerned about the potential appeal of more authoritarian societies in the 21st century.
Mehreen Khan 24:41
Exactly. And if you think about how China manages successfully to divide Europe a lot. So with this PPE issue you saw countries in the Western Balkans, notably in Serbia, who were getting a lot of supplies from China and you have the Serbian president singing the praises of China and asking the Europeans, and saying, where were you in our hour of need? And the vaccines discussion is definitely a race for who gets there first. Because, you know, that is what is going to determine a lot of what people think about the EU when it comes down to the fact that they think that, our people are dying and did you help us or not?
James Kanter 25:22
Yes. And so what you’re saying is that somebody who’s a progressive, internationalist minded person might want to keep a close eye on that, for signs of European chauvinism.
Mehreen Khan 25:33
Sure, does strategic autonomy mean that we have to be much more discerning, to put Europeans as first priority, and then think about the rest of the world. It will put a real, real strain on ideas of soft power and helping others and multilateralism when peoples’ lives are at stake. And I’m sure there will be a loud constituency of people in Europe, who say Europeans are our first priority, we have to vaccinate every European before we start giving these limited vaccines to those in other parts of the world.
James Kanter 26:07
As Nathalie also acknowledges there’s considerable neuralgia in Germany about strategic autonomy. For example, Merkel didn’t particularly like Macron’s push in the military sphere, at least not at first. And that was directly after Macron had talked about a brain death of NATO.
Mehreen Khan 26:26
This is the interview in The Economist where Macron talks about NATO being at risk of being brain dead. It was clearly a, you know, very caustic statement, designed to provoke people, particularly the Germans and others in the Baltics who are more reliant on NATO as a security blanket, for them to think about European security as an autonomous part of what it means in the EU and not to have it so clearly intertwined with the US security blanket. And obviously, NATO is a historical product of what happened after the war. That kind of pushes their buttons. I think the Germans, I think where they’re more comfortable talking about strategic autonomy is in areas like industrial policy, and the need to develop European champions, for example.
James Kanter 27:14
Let’s look at a Brussels based guru for strategic autonomy, and oh my, he’s a Francophone liberal in the same political family as President Macron. This is Charles Michel, the former prime minister of Belgium, who is now the head of the European Council, which organizes summits of the bloc’s 27 heads of state and government. Michel’s really drunk the Kool-Aid on this one.
Mehreen Khan 27:40
I think, first of all, if you’re the president of the European Council, you chair the meetings of the heads of states, it’s a bit of a strange job, because you don’t really have any policy initiative. But you can see why it’s so attractive for the president of the European Council to become attached to the notion of strategic autonomy, because it kind of, you know, give some meaning to your life and otherwise difficult job where it’s not entirely clear what the point of view is, to put it politely,
James Kanter 28:05
How is all this going for Michel? You know, in particular, what was the mood ahead of a leaders’ summit a few weeks ago, where strategic autonomy was supposed to be the main thing that they talked about?
Mehreen Khan 28:18
Yeah, we have two day summits and the second day was reserved just to speak about strategic autonomy and, irony of all ironies, I think this is very telling, in fact that President Macron was not there. He had to go back to France to give a speech. So he missed it despite the fact that he’s probably the reason they were having it in the first place. And without him, the leaders decided, uh, to drop it, actually.
James Kanter 28:44
There were some member states that were very open about their discomfort with this conversation anyway.
Mehreen Khan 28:50
So one of the things that I think was a missed opportunity is that if it had happened, the discussion, it would have been a moment for the skeptics of strategic autonomy to get their voice into this debate. And that’s very much how they were, you know, readying themselves for it. We can say the Nordics, the Dutch, the Irish, to some extent, you know, the band of free traders, sometimes known as the Hanseatic League, plus friends, who wanted to get Macron in the room and ask him, what do you mean? Because if we’re talking about reshoring of supply chains, or competing with China on things like battery development, it will just require a huge amount of government subsidies. It’s antithetical to the way they think about economic policy and the role of government in free markets. They think strategic autonomy is a way of smuggling in classic French protectionism and making it somehow the unofficial policy of Europe, and they don’t want anything to do with it. One senior diplomat said no, we will keep talking about strategic autonomy — strategic autonomy means let’s just wise up a little bit when people come into the single market and don’t necessarily play by our rules, i.e. Chinese companies. It does not mean fundamentally rewiring the principles of free trade, free movement of people, free movement of capital, which define the EU project for these countries.
James Kanter 30:10
And there’s another element to the awkwardness around strategic autonomy right now, which is the fight over unanimity — unanimous voting in the European Council on foreign policy issues. And it seems here that the EU is supremely incoherent. Charles Michel, this president of the European Council, again, representing the heads of state and government, he’s all in favor of strategic autonomy, yet he wants to keep unanimous decision making. And that makes EU foreign policy about as exciting as a lawn bowls championship you know it’s just incredibly slow moving, it undermines the ability to take decisions at the pace at which the world actually moves.
Mehreen Khan 30:53
I mean, the last three months, we have spent in Brussels, even more, about how to impose, reimpose, sanctions on Belarus for what happened in the country, and its authoritarian leader who almost suppressed the democratic will of his people. This should be something that you should be able to do very quickly. Because of the unanimity principle it was held up by one country, Cyprus, who sort of used their veto to try and get the EU to be equally tough on Turkey. This, I think, was you know, frustrating chastening moment in lots of ways, which if people want to take the right lessons from, they can say: okay, when it comes to the clear cases of human rights abuses in our neighborhood where we need to be seen to be strong, we can’t be held hostage, because other countries have grievances about different things.
James Kanter 31:43
And strategic autonomy will really fight with that if it is put into practice in terms of majority voting.
Mehreen Khan 31:49
If it means if the French the Germans and the big guys get their way, then Charles Michel has to be worried because he’s supposed to represent all 27. That includes the smallest of the small. And it is usually for the smaller countries, who when it comes to issues like foreign policy, and the other one is tax, are just fiercely protective of their ability to put a stop and a break on things. When these countries joined the EU like Cyprus, or like Ireland, they did it on the promise that they wouldn’t get railroaded like this. That being small is beautiful in the EU, and small sometimes means that you can say no to things.
James Kanter 32:26
So do you think that Nathalie Tocci is right that we will move in stages to majority voting when it comes to foreign policy issues in the European Council?
Mehreen Khan 32:36
So I think she’s right, that you could move to it in this small way. It will have to be provoked by the sort of mini crises where people realize that sometimes we just make ourselves look ridiculous. However, the broader principle of unanimity and chipping away at it, it’s an incredibly neuralgic issue.
James Kanter 32:55
Let’s look at a third proponent for strategic autonomy. And yes, he’s French. He was appointed to Brussels by President Macron. His name is Thierry Breton. And he is the European Commissioner for the internal market, a guy who likes to big up his private sector experience as well as his government experience. You know, with Breton in that role with a super-sized portfolio grouping areas directly linked to strategic autonomy, so from space and defense to digital services and artificial intelligence, and then putting all those areas under a single Commissioner, we’ve sort of gone from being a more globalist, multilateral European Union, in the last Commission, more toward the idea of embracing things like European tech sovereignty. And that idea of tech sovereignty gets folded in with strategic autonomy quite often.
Mehreen Khan 33:54
I think Breton is a hugely important new member of the cast on strategic autonomy. And because he is a very vocal commissioner, the fact that he has this private sector experience, he’s really using his position to put real flesh on the bones of this concept, and taking it away from necessarily just foreign policy to making it a core part of the industrial policy of Europe.
James Kanter 34:18
In particular, there’s the sort of 10-billion-euro GAIA-X initiative to create a computing network with specific European security standards. There’s the European Battery Alliance. There’s the European Raw Materials Alliance.
Mehreen Khan 34:33
I think with raw materials, one of the biggest tests that will happen is that in this area of processing of raw materials China’s so far ahead for various reasons, including the fact that Europe has for some companies onerous regulations on chemical standards and health and safety standards, which means you can’t just go out into mine, get loads of lithium, process it in Europe — is the processing capacity even in Europe — without having due concern for the environment for the communities involved, of workers. So if it involves unstitching, or at least turning the other a blind eye to some of the very fiercely protected rights and regulations that we’ve developed in Europe for other obvious reasons, because we care about things far more than just commercial interests and scaling of businesses. We also care about communities and we care about the environment. You know that’s going to be the test of how far you can push it.
James Kanter 35:25
There are elements of strategic autonomy, that really fight with Europe’s sense of moral superiority. After all, the European project began as a peace project. And that’s still a cornerstone for so many people when it comes to their Europeanness. And if strategic autonomy starts to be seen as a, you know, the gloves come off kind of Europe, that could be problematic for the way a lot of people see the European Union itself.
Mehreen Khan 35:52
Exactly. If we’re fighting fire with fire when it comes to say, Chinese state subsidized companies. So we’re going to have our own and subsidize them to so they can compete with you — I think Nathalie called this leveling down. If it also means that we have to play a little bit fast and loose with our environmental or our labor standards, then that’s when people are going to start asking major questions about why we are trying to become like China to fight China. I think a big test is how much can you get away with by shouting strategic autonomy.
James Kanter 36:22
And also possibly compromising aspects of the internal market, like making sure that certain companies don’t get over subsidized at the expense of upstarts and smaller players — that fairness is being compromised in the name of big.
Mehreen Khan 36:38
Exactly. If industrial policy and strategic autonomy means picking winners, when you pick winners, there are always losers. And if the backbones of some European economies is their mittelstands, their smaller businesses, their smaller entrepreneurial companies and corporations, where do they fit into the picture where we start picking winners and creating champions? There’s obviously clearly an attempt in the von der Leyen Commission to have a very coherent message of European sovereignty, strategic autonomy that includes our climate targets, that includes the way we regulate big tech, that includes data protection, that includes chemicals regulation, it includes foreign policy, you know, so the striving for coherence could actually I think, backfire a little bit.
James Kanter 37:32
That’s it for this episode. EU Scream’s nonprofit journalism is supported by listener donations, partnerships, and advertising. And we’re grateful to the Laura Kinsella Foundation for an annual grant. For more details, and for more episodes of EU Scream, visit our website at euscream.com. Thanks for listening.
