European economic nationalism

The European Union is an unlikely candidate for economic nationalism. Internally, the common trade and competition policy, a monetary union and a dense network of supranational regulations leave little room for national unilateralism. Externally, the EU has negotiated more free trade agreements than any other economic bloc. However, the federalist reading of the EU as a post-national project misreads, on the one hand, continuing reservations about national sovereignty, which stands in the way of a fiscal complement to monetary union. On the other hand, the EU is pushing its own policy of identity and sovereignty to assert itself in the intensified geo-economic competition with the USA and China. With its largest programme to date, NextGenerationEU, it is entering the global industrial policy arena. In the battle for the digital and green technologies of the future, it reproduces functions that are equivalent to those of traditional national competition states.