What Does it Take to Weaponize Europe’s Trade Agreements?

With the enactment of Global Gateway in December 2021, the EU turned into a geopolitical actor. Trade agreements constitute an important dimension of this new geopolitical strategy. In June 2023, the EU enacted its Economic Security Strategy to maximize the benefits of economic openness, minimize the risks from economic interdependencies, and prioritize economic cooperation with partner countries. These two economic initiatives are just two recent examples of how the EU is using economic policy tools to achieve its geostrategic aims. Against this backdrop, this paper examines whether de-risking strategies and partnering strategies have weaponized trade and investment agreements. This paper argues that the weaponization of the EU’s trade and investment agreements is more likely to happen in a setting of disruptive circumstances and power shifts at the global level. Disruptive circumstances refer to external shocks that propelled the EU to the global arena to defend and project its own sphere of influence. Power shifts at the global level, in particular the rise of China with its Belt and Road Initiative, explain why the EU joined the race to infrastructure funding in the Global South. To test the plausibility of this argument, this paper presents detailed analytic narratives of two substantial areas: trade and investment agreements after the enactment of the Global Gateway strategy. By so doing, the paper will examine the securitization of EU economic policy with its new de-risking, de-coupling, and diversification strategies. Against the simplistic view that the EU is very slow to adjust and adapt, this piece shows that the EU thus far acted in an effective way by turning vulnerabilities generated by economic interdependencies into geostrategic instruments.