The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said on Monday 26 July that the post-Covid-19 world will be “more unequal, more Asian, and more digital”.
“The world we are heading towards after the virus is—or will be—a more unequal, more Asian, and more digital world. I think these will be its three characteristics, not all of which are necessarily good”, he explained at a press conference during the ‘Quo Vadis Europa’ course in Santander, Spain.
Mr Borrell said the world will be “much more unequal, both between and within countries. It will also be “more Asian, because there will have been an acceleration of the shift of economic power to the Pacific, to South East Asia”. Finally, the world will be “more digital”, because digital tools became more important during the pandemic.
Moreover, according to the head of European diplomacy, the world will be more multipolar, but less multilateral. “From the end of the Cold War until today—or until recently—the world was unipolar. And now it is an imperfect bipolarity, because there are other poles and Europe should aim to be one of them”, he warned, adding that Europeans wanted to help make the world more multilateral.
The High Representative also considered that the world will be a more dangerous place. “It will be dominated by the rivalry between China and the United States, which is inevitable and logical in view of China’s emergence as a powerhouse against the US”, he added. Faced with this rivalry, the EU “has no interest in starting a new cold war”, preempted Mr Borrell.
In his view, Europeans will always be closer to Washington than to Beijing, sharing with the United States “the same political system, the same multi-party democracy, the same economic system”, even if this does not mean that their interests “always coincide”. “That is why Europe must find a place that is not dependent on one of the two players, but can defend its own interests. It will be difficult, but I think it will be the litmus test of Europe’s existence as a geopolitical power”, said the High Representative. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)