The EU and the current geopolitical challenges

By Dr Shamim Quadir, Senior Communications Officer, The City Law School, and Verónica Muñoz Martínez, Press Office Gradvantage Intern

On Wednesday 10 July, Professor José Manuel Barroso was welcomed to City, University of London to deliver the annual lecture of The City Law School’s Institute for the Study of European Law.

Professor Barroso, former president of the European Commission (2004-2014), is credited as being instrumental in the passing of the Treaty of Lisbon, responding to the global financial crisis and the subsequent Eurozone crisis.

His current roles include chair of Goldman Sachs’ International Advisors and also chair of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

He previously delivered the Mais Lecture 2018 , at Bayes Business School at the University.

The Lecture was chaired by Christopher Vajda KC, former Judge at the European Court of Justice, and was followed with questions led by discussants, Professor Panos Koutrakos , Professor of EU Law and Jean Monnet Chair in EU Law, The City Law School and Professor Elaine Fahey, Deputy Head of Department, The City Law School.

The subject I’d like to discuss with you this evening is European current geopolitical challenges. I’m conscious that we’re in an institution devoted to the study of law. I myself am a lawyer by training, but today I’m not going to speak about European Law. I talk of politics, and of course, one of the great things that matters, I believe, in the European Union is precisely the tension between law and politics and the great imagination of European lawyers and the creativity of law to accommodate some of the most important developments of European integration; we’ll see that also in the matter that I am going to bring to you today.

"I think we can say today that we’re living in a moment of acceleration of history […] we are in a situation where we still see an old international order, but we don’t have yet a new international order. Basically, after the Second World War, we have been living in an order, a multilateral order, created and to a large extent led by the United States and its allies, the so-called West. It’s not a coincidence that the United Nations Headquarters are in New York, the World Bank and the IMF are in Washington, they are not in Beijing or in Moscow.

I don’t see it’s possible to come back to the ‘status quo ante’ – when we compare how it was before that invasion – we’re going to come to another situation and we are in that process.

We have on one side Europe and the United States, on the other side Russia and China, and with ramifications including to North Korea, Iran, and other parts of the world, so it’s a very polarised situation.

I am completely convinced that it was a war that was determined by one man. There was not a real demand in Russia for a war against Ukraine.  This raises a very important question. Many analysts think that macro trends rule the world, that markets have a decisive influence, that some state structures are the ones with real power, but it appears that individual political decisions may have so dramatic consequences – I think it was in fact a decision of Putin, from what I know of him, to make that invasion of Ukraine.  It wasn’t the military.

What was impossible became possible, this is exactly what’s happening in European defence. Britain may be part of it, remaining institutionally out of the EU. If you took note of the first comments of the new government in the UK, it’s precisely stressing the possibilities of a reset in the relationship including co-operation in the field of European defense, because Europeans want to do something to protect their goals and their interests, and they can only do this together.