Introduction
The international system is in a state of upheaval. In the last decade, much of public debate has been dedicated to global power shifts away from the United States and Europe and towards countries with strong economic growth or development potential, such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. This trend grew stronger in the wake of the financial and economic crisis in 2008–2010, the Eurozone crisis in 2010, and the relatively weak economic recovery in numerous parts of the western world, which further underlined the vulnerability of the liberal market model (see e.g. Bernitz et al. 2018). New security threats in the form of terrorism and acts of violence by non-state actors are shaking Europe and its neighbours, while war, instability, poor governance, and climate change have forced over 65 million people from home (see e.g. Bakardijeva Engelbrekt et al. 2018a, b). Meanwhile, major technological shifts in the form of digitization, robotization, and artificial intelligence have already begun to upset traditional patterns of economic and social interaction (see e.g. Teigland et al. 2018).
These developments have the effect of seriously unsettling the liberal international order as we know it. This order was shaped in the decades following World War II and it lead to the exponential spread of democratic norms and values after the end of the Cold War. However, this liberal order is now facing severe challenges, threatening ultimately to lead to its demise. In terms of external challenges the growing influence of rising great powers is particularly notable. Many of these great powers do not share western values, and are openly defying established principles of international cooperation by advocating alternative world orders. In terms of internal challenges, equally vociferous contestation towards the liberal world order have been coming from inside the West, where populism and nationalism are posing a threat to the very foundations of liberal democracy . As we are approaching the end of the 2010s, most European countries are wrestling with anti-democratic forces that are challenging prevailing values and forms of government whereas the United States is being torn apart by a growing partisanship divide while President Trump is openly defying long-cherished rules and government practice.
In 2018 the EU celebrated the 60th anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty of Rome. In the course of its history, the Union has suffered serious setbacks and navigated through a number of crises. Yet, the above described foundering of the liberal world order arguably constitutes the Union’s most complex challenge to date. Much of the complexity resides in the fact that the EU is at once the product of this world order and a guarantor of the same. The mutual dependency between the EU and the liberal world order raises fundamental questions: How should the EU work to maintain international free trade in a context marked by an escalating trade war, and how is the new protectionist US trade policy affecting the EU and the Euro? Can the strong waves of neo-mercantilism triggered by a number of great powers be stopped, and what effects will economic nationalism have on the advancement of global financial regulation? Can the European-style welfare state survive in a changing world order that is marked by uncertainty and divisiveness? How is the weakening of multilateralism and global regulation influencing EU’s capacity to act in the rest of the world? What impact will Brexit have on European cohesion and the future shape of the EU? What influence will right-wing populist parties have on EU member states capacity to act in common and pursue European policies? Can international law and the rule of law survive in an increasingly illiberal world order, and how can the consistency of the EU legal order be ensured against nationalist forces? How will the media image of the EU and EU communications policy be affected not only by social media but also by disinformation and propaganda?
This is the second book in Palgrave’s Interdisciplinary European Studies book series. The book is published at a time when the EU is facing the most complex challenge of its existence: that is, how to stay true to the principles of its own inception in an increasingly less liberal world order. Considering the profound changes arising from global power shifts and contestation towards liberal values and forms of government, the book’s interdisciplinary, holistic approach is particularly apt. Order at the international level, however, is a complicated concept. In various ways, therefore, the authors of this book address how a changing world order is affecting the EU and how the EU, in turn is trying to shape the emerging new order by recalibrating its policies and actions in various domains, ranging from the Union’s relations with the rest of the world, the relations among the member states and EU institutions as well as the impact of the Union’s current and future policies. In order to pave the way for the following chapters in the book, this chapter, by way of introduction, aims to shed light on how tightly the EU and the liberal international order are entwined and discuss the likely impact on the EU of a changing and, most likely, less liberal world order.
The EU and the Emergence of the Liberal World Order
The founding of the European Economic Community (EEC) with the entry into force of the Treaty of Rome in 1958 marked a key step in the creation of what is now the EU. At the time, a customs union was created through the EEC among the six original member states: West Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Following the creation of the customs union, the EEC also crafted a common external trade policy. The customs union and the trade policy can both be regarded as important components of the US post–World War II goal of promoting economic exchange between the countries in the “free” (western) world. US efforts to strengthen the liberal order, primarily through the Bretton Woods Institutions, were further advanced by several significant free trade talks in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s within the framework of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), in which the EEC was able to negotiate as a unified party. Another important dimension of the European external trade policy was the possibilities it offered countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to maintain economic influence over the former colonies in Africa and Asia as well as to uphold the responsibility for ensuring efficient trade with these countries through the establishment of trade and cooperation agreements with the same, from Yaoundé (1963–1975) to Lomé (1975–2000).1
As economic integration within the European Community (EC) deepened in the following decades, more western European countries joined the organization, starting with the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark in 1973. This was soon followed by the accession to the EC by the southern European countries, first Greece in 1981 and soon thereafter Portugal and Spain in 1986. For these three new member states, the decision to seek and obtain membership of the EC was aimed at securing democratic consolidation and bolstering the difficult path to socioeconomic modernization (Michalski and Wallace 1993). Then, in the beginning of the 1990s, the deepening of market integration and the momentous geopolitical shift in guise of the end to the Cold War both contributed to the creation of the European Union (EU) through the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. The end of the Cold War also allowed for the accession in 1995 of Sweden, Finland, and Austria, whose neutrality had hitherto prevented such a step. The swift “EFTA enlargement” that brought in the three members of the European Free Trade Association into the EU was succeeded by a long period of adjustment to conditions of membership for the ten formerly communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe, along with Cyprus, and Malta, which acceded to the EU in 2004 and 2007. In a way, the role of the EU as a stabilizing force in Europe came to fruition with this major eastern enlargement. That the EU had, in a sense, found its geopolitical calling in a united continent was apparent in the increasingly explicit conditions imposed on countries that applied for membership, which were compelled to demonstrate a functioning market economy, democratic government, and the effective rule of law (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005). The European integration process and the role of the EU in the emerging liberal order were thus entwined from the outset, and in that sense the process of market integration in Europe and the regulation of international trade can be regarded, from a European perspective, as two sides of the same coin.
But European integration has obviously not only served a strictly economic purpose. The safeguarding of liberal democracy in Europe has been equally important, partly in the attempt to prevent the return of fascism t...