First glance

Updated assessment: Memos to the commissioners responsible for EU foreign, enlargement, and partnerships policies

Publishing date
30 January 2025
Authors
Heather Grabbe Jean Pisani-Ferry Jeromin Zettelmeyer
Enlargement FA

Published alongside Heather Grabbe and Jeromin Zettelmeyer's paper, 'Not yet Trump-proof: an evaluation of the European Commission’s emerging policy platform'. 

The following text provides a follow-up to the memos to the commissioners responsible for EU foreign, enlargement and partnerships policies, originally published on 4th September 2024. All Memos to the European Union leadership were collected in the book, 'Unite, defend, grow'.

The European Union has thrived in an environment of peace in Europe and rules-based international cooperation. These conditions have fundamentally changed. Russia continues to assault Ukraine and is bringing hybrid war into EU member states and candidate countries. President Trump is talking about territorial expansion as an objective of his administration. China and the United States have been undermining rules-based trade and the confrontation between them is likely to escalate. Resentment of the Western-dominated world order has grown in developing and emerging countries, yet there is no agreement among them on an alternative to the current governance architecture.

What changes as a result of Trump? Donald Trump’s return reinforces the trend towards transactional relationships, the weakening of rules-based international governance and a might-is-right mentality. The prospect of a reduced US role in European security and a worsening situation in Ukraine are encouraging faster EU common action, but some member countries would prefer bilateral deals that please Trump and Putin. Trump may not care about Ukraine and Moldova joining the EU, but there is a risk that Putin might ask for their membership to be held up as part of a deal with Trump on Ukraine. Trumpism might also affect enlargement by encouraging candidate-country leaders to push back against EU good-governance and anti-corruption conditions for accession, or to influence voters to support pro-Russian and anti-EU parties.

Trump’s anti-China policies will present the EU with difficult choices. As Chinese exports are redirected to Europe, US tariffs on China are likely to fuel demand for similar protection in the EU. However, the EU might find it has more in common with China than with the US on climate and the preservation of fundamental trade principles.

The European Commission’s approach. The EU is preparing for a tariff war with the US while standing by its enlargement, development and climate policies. The Commission aims to rapidly expand the EU’s defence capability and pay greater attention to economic security while preserving the rules-based system. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has clarified that the role of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy will neither gain nor lose responsibilities – the role of the Defence and Space Commissioner is largely additional and focused on the defence industry. 

Assessment and updated recommendations. The Commission’s strategy is broadly right. But it is also narrow, particularly because it focuses foreign economic policy almost exclusively on security concerns and supply-chain resilience. The EU needs to take additional steps to get ahead of expected actions by Trump and Putin:

  • Prepare options for a deal with Trump on Europe taking increased financial and operational responsibility for its own security, rather than wait for him to decide to change the US’s engagement with EU;

  • Chart its own path in relation to China, treating China as a partner on climate change while reducing its vulnerability to hostile Chinese actions (economic and otherwise);

  • Build new alliances with countries that continue to regard multilateral cooperation as beneficial, including Brazil, India and Indonesia. To do so, the Commission should be ready to align the EU’s formal weight within multilateral institutions with its diminished economic weight, conditional on major emerging countries committing to effective action.

With like-minded advanced countries, the EU must scale up the climate finance it provides to major developing countries, particularly for decarbonisation. As a major contribution to the global commons, this should not be financed from aid budgets. The EU also needs to develop a strategy to reconcile its industrial and economic-security interests with the development interests of its partners.

EU-level foreign, defence, and climate spending – including support for international climate mitigation – will have to be significantly expanded. This may require temporary common borrowing. 

About the authors

  • Heather Grabbe

    Heather Grabbe is a Senior fellow at Bruegel, as well as visiting professor at University College London and KU Leuven. The focus of her research is the political economy of the European Green Deal and how the climate transition will change the EU’s international relationships and external policies.

    She is a political scientist who has served as director of the Open Society European Policy Institute in Brussels, and earlier as deputy director of the Centre for European Reform in London. She conducted academic research at the European University Institute, Chatham House, Oxford and Birmingham universities, as well as teaching at the London School of Economics. From 2004 to 2009 Heather was senior advisor to then European Commissioner Olli Rehn, responsible in his Cabinet for policy on the Balkans and Turkey. She has written extensively on the political economy of EU enlargement, the EU’s external and neighbourhood policies, and the evolution of new policy agendas in climate, digital and the rule of law. Her columns appear in the Financial Times, Politico and other quality media.

    Heather earned her PhD at Birmingham University, and her first degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, where she also had a post-doctoral fellowship. She is fluent in English, French and Italian, with working level German.

  • Jean Pisani-Ferry

    Jean Pisani-Ferry is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute (Washington DC). He is also a professor of economics with Sciences Po (Paris).

    He sits on the supervisory board of the French Caisse des Dépôts and serves as non-executive chair of I4CE, the French institute for climate economics.

    Pisani-Ferry served from 2013 to 2016 as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie, the ideas lab of the French government. In 2017, he contributed to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid as the Director of programme and ideas of his campaign. He was from 2005 to 2013 the Founding Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank that he had contributed to create. Beforehand, he was Executive President of the French PM’s Council of Economic Analysis (2001-2002), Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance (1997-2000), and Director of CEPII, the French institute for international economics (1992-1997).

    Pisani-Ferry has taught at University Paris-Dauphine, École Polytechnique, École Centrale and the Free University of Brussels. His publications include numerous books and articles on economic policy and European policy issues. He has also been an active contributor to public debates with regular columns in Le Monde and for Project Syndicate.

  • Jeromin Zettelmeyer

    Jeromin Zettelmeyer has been Director of Bruegel since September 2022. Born in Madrid in 1964, Jeromin was previously a Deputy Director of the Strategy and Policy Review Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Prior to that, he was Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow (2019) and Senior Fellow (2016-19) at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Director-General for Economic Policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (2014-16); Director of Research and Deputy Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2008-2014), and an IMF staff member, where he worked in the Research, Western Hemisphere, and European II Departments (1994-2008).

    Jeromin holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT (1995) and an economics degree from the University of Bonn (1990). He is a Research Fellow in the International Macroeconomics Programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and a member of the CEPR’s Research and Policy Network on European economic architecture, which he helped found. He is also a member of CESIfo. He has published widely on topics including financial crises, sovereign debt, economic growth, transition to market, and Europe’s monetary union. His recent research interests include EMU economic architecture, sovereign debt, debt and climate, and the return of economic nationalism in advanced and emerging market countries.    

Theme
Global economy and trade
Keyword
European neighbourhood policy cohesion policy eu governance trade policy emerging economies
Language
English

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