Europe Adrift

Europe is adrift in the face of great turmoil and transformation. The liberal international order that emerged after the Cold War has disintegrated and the EU lacks a coherent strategic vision for responding to – let alone shaping – the emergent world order. There has been a shift away from market liberalism and toward state interventionism, strategic autonomy and a more assertive EU internationally. Yet these efforts are haunted by legacies from the neoliberal era that continue to limit its capacity for effective action. Herein lies the challenge. Europe struggles to overcome internal challenges, namely internal rivalry and a seeming inability to implement much-needed reforms, while it simultaneously faces a security threat from Russia, erratic mercantilism from the US, a competitiveness challenge vis-à-vis China, and declining goodwill in the Global South, all in the context of ecological collapse. This special issue takes the dynamics of intensifying global inter-state competition as an entry point to survey the erosion of European security, growth and normative power whose foundations were laid in the neoliberal era, the contradictions contestations and constraints revealed in the responses from European actors in the face of this erosion, and how European power and prosperity is being reshaped in unexpected ways.