In the margins of a conference in Warsaw on the EU’s strategic autonomy on Friday 3 March, S&D group vice-president Pedro Marques (Portuguese) presented to EUROPE the S&D strategy paper for an open strategic autonomy, i.e. “a stronger, more open and more self-confident Europe”.
“Europe needs to be able to stand strongly and more autonomously for its positions, but not isolate itself from the rest of the world. It’s for us to be able to promote, with much more effectiveness, our values in the global order”, he explained.
“We want to be more strategic, more autonomous to be able to promote stronger cooperation in the world. We cannot strongly promote our values of peace, human rights, a multilateral order to face climate change, etc., if we are not capable to stand on our own”, added the MEP.
In its 24-page strategy paper, the S&D group proposes several measures to strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy in foreign policy, including a move to qualified majority voting.
The group also says that the High Representative should be the voice of the EU in the world. “We consider that the figure of the High Representative is the best positioned one, because it stands as a link between the institutions. But what we are saying clearly is that we cannot continue with this kind of almost a cacophony between the institutions”, explained Mr Marques, as the High Representative, but also the President of the Commission and the President of the European Council represent the EU abroad.
The EU must also, according to the S&D, be able to take “swift and effective decisions and speak the language of unity and power in world affairs”. At the conference, former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski said he hoped that the war in Ukraine would make Europe realise that slow reaction and decision-making times are a weakness for Europe. “There is less time to react and the level of risk is higher”, he added.
The S&D also advocates for the implementation of an assertive trade policy through value-based trade agreements and support for a reformed World Trade Organization and multilateral trade rules “while making trade policy an essential part of the geopolitical agenda” of the EU.
On the other hand, MEP Marek Belka (S&D, Polish) said that the EU was only now learning how to use its economic power to achieve its goals, citing for example the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).
The S&D strategy paper highlights the main changes needed in terms of external policy, but also internal policy. “The concept of strategic autonomy was born in the field of security and defence. However, it quickly and inevitably evolved into a broader debate on European sovereignty in a number of other strategic areas, including foreign, trade, health, energy, economic, digital, innovation, environmental, agricultural or food policy, to name but a few”, it states.
Moreover, for Mr Marques, “better internal policies (...) will also mean a better ability to influence the rest of the world and not be dependent”. “And it’s important not to be dependent on the Chinese for critical materials and things like that. This is a concrete example of an internal policy that will have a brutal impact on the external position and dependence on critical materials”, he added.
In its paper, the S&D proposes, among other things, to build diversified, secure and resilient supply chains in all key areas of the EU’s open strategic autonomy, to promote and encourage reindustrialisation in strategic segments of the value chain and industrial sectors or to increase its sovereignty and global market share in the semiconductor sector.
In the debate, Mr Belka called for an audit on China to find out where the EU is dependent on China and how to become less dependent. “We have to do this and we have to start the process of weakening these dependencies”, he added, saying that for this to happen, the EU had to be closer to other regions in the world such as Latin America or Africa.
For Mr Kwaśniewski, it is also important to have a common vision regarding the US and China.
See the document: https://aeur.eu/f/5mz (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)