Rebuilding the fortress? Europe in a changing world economy

Abstract

Two rival visions of Europe’s place in the world economy competed for primacy throughout the post-war era. The idea of an ‘Atlantic Europe’ promoted close economic ties to the United States and integration into the liberal international order. An alternative ‘Fortress Europe’ vision aimed to carve out a sphere of relative European autonomy backed by trade barriers and industrial protectionism. While many argued that the ‘Fortress Europe’ vision was defeated during the globalization of the 1990s and 2000s, concepts such as economic sovereignty, industrial strategy and ‘strategic autonomy’ have returned to EU circles. Is a rebuilding of ‘Fortress Europe’ taking place in this context? This paper argues that the old tension between ‘Atlantic’ and ‘Fortress’ Europe is re-emerging but in a new form and under a new set of international conditions. A ‘selective fortification’ of European industrial strategy and trade policy is taking shape, as EU policymakers develop targeted instruments and institutional capacities that aim to insulate European firms from new patterns of international competition. The selective refortification of European capitalism has implications for debates within international political economy (IPE) on the future of liberal international order, new patterns of competitive regionalization, and the restructuring of the relation between the state and global capitalism.

Keywords:

• European Union
• globalization
• international political economy
• state capitalism
• industrial strategy
• trade

Acknowledgements

I have accumulated numerous intellectual debts throughout the course of writing this article. I presented the paper at the Council of European Studies (CES) annual conference in Lisbon and at the British International Studies Association IPE Group (BISA IPEG) workshop, both in 2022. The anonymous reviewers provided rigorous and constructive feedback on the paper. I would also like to thank various colleagues who provided fruitful commentary on the argument at various moments, including but not limited to Andrew Gamble, Davide Schmid, Jeremy Green, Jon Gamu, Jonna Nyman and Henrique Lopes-Valença.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust’s Early Career Fellowship. Grant number: ECF-2017-281.

Notes on contributors

Scott Lavery

Scott Lavery is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sheffield. His work engages international political economy, EU studies and British politics. He is the author of British Capitalism after the Crisis (2019) and numerous articles in journals including New Political Economy, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy and British Journal of Politics and International Relations.