Towards a new international economic governance : the possible role of Europe

Abstract

Multilateralism, which prevailed until the global financial crisis and survived until the middle of the 2010 decade, has become a chimera. The economic rivalry between the USA and China, which focuses on technological competition, cannot be overcome and is likely to intensify in the post-pandemic period. This does not mean that Europe must accept zero- or negative-sum solutions in the new global economic governance. Our paper aims to show that the European Union (EU) could play an active role, if it was able to reduce its technological gap towards the other two areas and to enhance its comparative advantages. In this respect, the triangular game between the USA, China and the EU is defined by the interrelationship between the sustainability of the development model and technological leadership. Within these coordinates, the EU can offer a ‘focal point’ for international economic governance conditional to its capacity to become an ‘attractor’ in terms of environmental and social sustainability, to correct its distortionary dependence on external demand, and to recover its main delays in innovative technologies. In order to achieve such complex results, the ‘sine qua non’ condition is that the European Union ensures full coherence between its geopolitical aspirations and its internal agenda.