EU Open Strategic Autonomy and the Future of the Global Economic Order

The shift from the post-Cold war unipolarity to the current multipolar order, marked by growing US-China rivalry was a first major factor behind the EU's adoption of Open Strategic Autonomy (OSA). Tributary to the security strategy adopted by the EU in the mid-2010s, OSA has also been Europe’s response to changes in climate and technology policies, with integration tilted towards autonomy, and technological cooperation crafted to preserve Brussels’ capacity to act independently. As such, OSA sets for the Union a very ambitious goal, yet one the current global context has made unavoidable. While some have argued that OSA will weaken the EU-US transatlantic compact, others have suggested its strategic value for the Union, vis-à-vis both security partners (the US) and antagonists (China). Prima-facie evidence from specific policy-areas, in turn, has unveiled how new OSA-related EU regulation can trigger internal fragmentation, pushing Member states to prefer national solutions and shun EU-led initiatives altogether. This chapter discusses the outcomes of the implementation of 9 surveyed OSA measures and policies (CBAM, NZIA and CRMA, EU Chips Act, as well as Export restriction regulation, FDI Screening Mechanism, Single Market Emergency Instrument- SMEI, Foreign Subsidies Regulation - FSR, Trade enforcement Regulation and ACI – Anti Coercion Instrument) along 2 different dimensions: 1.EU autonomy from the US; 2.Choice of negotiation fora/Coalitional dynamics. The chapter also investigates the compatibility of each of the 9 policy tools with the existing WTO regulations. Compared to a pre-OSA world, higher trade restriction is to be expected. Combining the variations in the 2 dimensions, however, leads to different scenarios, with respect to the EU’s role and more broadly for the global political economy of the 21st century. For heuristic purposes, the chapter stylizes three ‘autonomy tracks’: (1) EU’s loyal followership to the US, (2) EU’s increased autonomy from the US and gradual strengthening into a third pole in the global geo-economic competition, along with the US and China; (3) EU’s heightened internal fragmentation. While the latter substantiates an overall regressive outcome, the first two tracks may lead to either forward-looking or inward-looking coalitional dynamics at the international level.