Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Will ‘strategic autonomy 3.0’ deliver?

Davide Schmid and Scott Lavery 6th May 2021

The vision of Europe as an autonomous global actor has much in its favour—except that we have been here before.

strategic autonomy
Davide Schmid

There have been growing calls for Europe to pursue an agenda of ‘strategic autonomy’ on the global stage. The ambition, voiced by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the European Commission, is to bolster Europe’s geopolitical, technological and economic independence, in an increasingly unpredictable and multi-polar world.

The ideas behind this agenda are not however new. Indeed, this is ‘strategic autonomy 3.0’—the latest in a long line of attempts to carve out an independent space for European institutions and nation-states in the global arena.

strategic autonomy
Scott Lavery

Distinctive institutions

Although the founding fathers of European integration, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, never used the phrase, the desire to secure strategic autonomy was inscribed in the process from the outset. ‘Strategic autonomy 1.0’ was forged after World War II, in a context shaped by the cold war and the centrality of the United States in the remaking of the western world.

This first version represented a compromise. European alignment with US economic and geopolitical power would afford European nation-states a space within which to cultivate distinctive institutions at the national and supranational levels. In this context, welfare systems were strengthened, full male employment was achieved and collective-bargaining institutions were cultivated across the continent.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

The constraints on ‘strategic autonomy 1.0’ became clear as the postwar system began to unravel in the 1970s. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods global financial arrangements and the rise of neoliberalism sent shockwaves throughout Europe: currency instability, rampant inflation and rising unemployment.

It was in this context that ‘strategic autonomy 2.0’ was born. By the mid-1980s, European elites had accommodated to the logics of an increasingly neoliberal, US-led order. It was hoped that monetary co-ordination of national currencies, culminating in the creation of the euro in the 1990s, would lay the foundations for an eventual challenge to the primacy of the dollar. The single market would similarly create the conditions for the growth of European firms capable of competing on the world market.

Dangerously embroiled

The limitations of ‘strategic autonomy 2.0’ were however starkly revealed as the neoliberal order entered into crisis. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash, it became clear that European economies had become dangerously embroiled in an unstable Anglo-American financial system and that the euro was incapable of challenging dollar primacy. On the geopolitical level, a coherent European foreign policy struggled to emerge, as tensions with Russia and growing concerns over the influence of China failed to engender a unified response.

Europe’s contemporary ‘strategic autonomy 3.0’ agenda is taking shape in this new, volatile global context. It emerged in the aftermath of the ‘Brexit’ referendum and the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016, amid widespread concerns that Europe’s traditional partners could no longer be relied upon. Europeans, in Merkel’s words in 2017, needed to ‘take their destiny into their own hands’. In this vein, the incoming commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, promised in 2019 to run a ‘geopolitical’ commission.

Concretely, this agenda has been linked with defence initiatives such as PESCO (‘permanent structured co-operation’) and the development of what Macron terms ‘autonomous operating capabilities’. In his vision, this would be accompanied by an independent foreign policy, through which Europe would disentangle itself from the emerging US-China rivalry and reduce its dependence on external powers. Strategic autonomy has thus been linked with proposals ranging from the ‘onshoring’ of key supply chains to a more assertive industrial strategy, with reforms to EU merger and acquisition law to encourage ‘European champions’.

‘Strategic autonomy 3.0’ ostensibly goes beyond the previous iterations, hinting at a project of European independence which spans economic, monetary and industrial policy as well as trade, defence and foreign affairs. It also calls for greater distance from US power than previously imagined. Nonetheless, strategic autonomy 3.0 has to contend with many of the same constraints and limitations as its predecessors.

Firmly entrenched

Key axes of US power remain firmly entrenched, particularly in the monetary and financial sphere. Contrary to the expectations of the euro’s most fervent advocates, the dollar endures as the pre-eminent international reserve currency. European banks remain heavily reliant on dollar liquidity and structurally subordinate to the power of the Federal Reserve as a global lender of last resort.

The commission hopes to reverse this dependence through its ‘capital markets union’ agenda. However, this approach reproduces previous failed attempts at challenging US primacy by essentially mimicking its financial structures. There are good reasons to think it won’t work this time either. 


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

Crafting Europe into a more integrated and globally competitive economic bloc would require sustained stimulus packages and industrial upgrading across the EU states. In turn, this would demand substantial expansion of the EU budget, large fiscal transfers between the European ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ and new, solidaristic financial instruments, such as eurobonds. Any attempt to advance such a strategy would face profound institutional obstacles and political opposition.

Similarly, the development of a more unified European foreign policy faces the dual challenge of securing popular consent for greater supranational integration and of drawing together the divergent orientations of EU member states. As recent tensions between Germany, the commission and eastern-European countries over the proposed Nord Stream 2 project show, this is by no means an easy task.

The earlier projects of strategic autonomy unravelled as a result of Europe’s structural dependence on the US and internal tensions within European politics and political economy. Will ‘strategic autonomy 3.0’ agenda succeed where these attempts failed? Squeezed between Washington and Beijing, European leaders hope to answer this question in the affirmative—but history suggests the outcome could be very different.

This draws on arguments developed in an accessible Journal of Common Market Studies article.

Davide Schmid and Scott Lavery

Davide Schmid is a lecturer in international relations and political economy at Manchester Metropolitan University. Scott Lavery is a lecturer in politics at the University of Sheffield and research fellow at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI).

You are here: Home / Politics / Will ‘strategic autonomy 3.0’ deliver?

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

OECD,inflation,monetary The OECD and the Great Monetary RestrictionRonald Janssen
prostitution,Europe,abolition Prostitution is not a free choice for womenLina Gálvez Muñoz
Abuse,work,workplace,violence Abuse at work: who bears the brunt?Agnès Parent-Thirion and Viginta Ivaskaite-Tamosiune
Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube