The European Union’s strategy for facing the challenges of the 21st century

Abstract

In an international context where uncertainty is the norm due to the distancing of traditional allies such as the United States and the European Union, caused not only by different political positions on issues such as the war in Ukraine, the environment, and NATO, but also because in the early months of 2025, Donald Trump's second administration as US president has triggered a trade war by raising tariffs on virtually all countries that trade with the US, including members of the European Union, The question that arises for scholars of Europe is whether this integration process has the tools to remain an influential player on the international stage, or whether its dependence on other countries in various areas (technology, security, trade, etc.) in this environment of uncertainty, which has revealed the vulnerability generated by free trade and cooperation with other states, puts its international presence at risk. Our hypothesis is that the interregional practice that the European Union has developed over decades will provide it with the links and tools to deal with the tariff policy that characterizes Donald Trump's second administration.

To answer this question, we will consider those areas in which the European Union has long excelled and which respond to the essential principles of the integration process. By this we mean actions that result from principles and values such as freedom, democracy, and solidarity, as established in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, and which go beyond the current situation. Therefore, concepts such as cooperation, multilateralism, regionalism, and interregionalism, as well as vulnerability, will be used; that is, theories from international relations to neoliberalism will be used to understand the phenomenon at hand.