Hi! Welcome to this fourth episode of EuropeChats with Jim Cloos. Jim is TEPSA Secretary-General and former Director General of the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union. Today we will analyse one of the main buzzwords arising in European policy discussions in the last few years: 'European Strategic Autonomy'. Hello Jim. Hello Mariam. What is strategic autonomy? And why this debate now? The debate about strategic autonomy arose for two reasons principally. The first one is that we have realised that we live in a difficult world, even I would say a threatening world. At the same time, we have gone through a number of crises over the last 15 years which – each of them – revealed some weaknesses. So there has been a growing feeling that Europe has to get stronger, more powerful, and more autonomous. The concept of strategic a utonomy is a way to structure this debate. There are many definitions. I personally like the simplest of definitions, which says that it is “the freedom to act, and the freedom from over-dependence”. Through this general formulation, consensus might be easy. But is there a shared understanding among Member States on how this general ambition should translate into concrete action? Is there sufficient dialogue on this? How independent can Europe be in the rest of the world in the 21st century? You know, as often happens in Europe, the same term elicits very different interpretations. It is therefore important from the outset to state clearly what we are not talking about. So strategic autonomy is not about autarchy, it is not about being completely self-sufficient. We do not reason in terms of a Union that is cut off from the world: we are completely integrated into the global world order. The second thing I would say is that it is neither a way of reintroducing protectionism by the back door. We have different views on trade within the Union – between Member States – but there is not one Member State who would call into question the importance of trade for our economic prosperity. So calling into question trade would be folly on the part of the European Union, which is the biggest trading power in the world. And lastly, strategic autonomy is not about attacking NATO, it is not about weakening the transatlantic relationship. Because that would be folly in our present system, and it would certainly go down badly with some of our Member States, particularly in the Eastern part of Europe, who consider that their hard security is being guaranteed by NATO and by the transatlantic relationship. Some have indeed criticised the notion of European strategic autonomy as being too driven by a desire for Europe to emancipate itself from the US influence. By contrast, high level Chinese representatives have been praising the concept in the context of EU-China investment agreement negotiations. Is the notion of strategic autonomy too anti-American? Is it water on China’s mill? I do not believe it is. Unless, of course, you believe that showing some degree of independence or autonomy vis-à-vis the United States is being anti-American, which I do not think it is. It seems to me that a strong European Union is actually in the interests of a strong transatlantic partnership. And we are certainly not obliged to endorse the Chinese view of looking at our strategic autonomy. If I may say so, that is part of our strategic autonomy: to have our own ideas about it. But your question does raise one fundamental issue, it seems to me. It seems to be based on the assumption that we have to choose between America and China across the board. Now, it depends on what we are talking about: if we look at the political system of China, it is quite clear, as we said before, that it is a systemic rival, which the United States clearly is not. And if the overall relations between the United States and China worsen more, it is quite clear which side we would be on. But at the same time we have to ask ourselves the question: is it in our interests that the world again develops into two antagonistic blocs? The West vis-à-vis China, which would probably mean also vis-à-vis Russia and a few others. This would not square with our official policy, which is, vis-à-vis China, to look at China at the same time as a partner in some areas, as a competitor in others, and as a systemic rival. So I think if you look at it this way, then you see transatlantic relations which have to be very firm on systemic efforts, but we can have different views on how to structure our trade, for instance. Washington, incidentally, has never said that we should not work with China: the Americans work, of course, with China. It is obvious for both of us – the Americans and the Europeans – that in terms of climate change, the fight against climate change, if we do not have China on board, it is going to be a real problem. The same with trade: we have an interest in getting the Chinese to play ball, to respect the rules of the WTO. Now, there can be differences between the Americans and us on certain issues, for instance how to deal exactly with Huawei is a good example. We do not do exactly the same as the United States. There is one other point, and that is: if the assumption is that we should follow Washington on every single one of the policies and details, then we are – one – going to lose any kind of leverage vis-à-vis China, and secondly, we will lose the opportunity to influence the American debate. I will ask you a question: wasn’t it a good thing that the Europeans, at the time of the Trump Presidency, showed autonomy and did not follow President Trump on trade, climate change, or the nuclear deal with Iran? On all of those issues I would say that because we held the ground, it is actually now easier for President Biden to revert to sounder policies, which are probably more in the interest of America and the European Union. So in this respect it is good that we have a certain autonomy: we should not be over-dependent on what the American congress does for climate change, we should certainly not operate with secondary sanctions between us. We should work together. We have our differences, but together we will certainly move towards a better world if we work together as equal partners. So it seems that vis-à-vis the US, the point is to foster friendship but on a more equal footing. But is the EU ready for it? Recently Josep Borrell said that the EU cannot be a serious geopolitical actor so long as its political union is weak. Does the EU governance system enable for increased strategic autonomy? Borrell asks the right question. He is, of course, right in a way. To be a truly global actor in a multipolar world, we have to strengthen our political union. Now, I see four elements here. The first one is: we need a better understanding of how the modern world really functions. We like multilateralism, we like values, and that is all fine. But we live in a world where not everybody shares our postmodern view of the world, and it is certainly not moving towards more liberalism. The world is difficult. So that is the first thing: you have to understand which environment you are living in. The second one is: we need a joint reflection on the EU’s place within on the global chessboard, and I come back to what we discussed before: where should we be in a relationship with China, with the transatlantic relationship. What should be our relationship with America? Should we construct a more equal relationship? How should we handle relationships with more difficult partners like Turkey, like Russia? What should we do with Africa, what should we do with the UK, for instance? Those are really important questions. The third point I would like to make is: we need a recognition – and we have to be honest about this – there are divergences of opinion between Member States vis-à-vis third countries. For geographical reasons, or historic reasons. And we should simply accept it and then work together to define our common interests better. Finally, I would say: we also have to work consciously towards the right balance between interests and values. Both are important of course. But we have to look at all angles of a relationship, for instance with China. We talk a lot about sanctions. Sanctions can be quite an important and useful instrument in certain situations. I recently read an interesting analysis of this by Sven Biscop from Egmont, who questions our policy of using sanctions to transform the nature of a regime, be it Russia or China. He simply feels that targeted sanctions in this respect do not actually allow us to solve the issue, and he sees sanctions more as a way to use sparingly, but to use quite strongly, when Russia, China, or others actually threaten directly our own security. But if China imprisons thousands of people in forced labour camps, or imposes totalitarian rules over Hong Kong, should the EU just issue strong statements? What interest would it serve if the EU gave up on sanctions related to human rights violations? We should certainly not give up on defending human rights. The question is the efficiency of our action, that is what I want to talk about. Will the pin-prick sanctions we have just taken vis-à-vis China change their behaviour as far as the Uyghurs are concerned? I doubt it. Consistent and firm condemnation, revealing systematically what we learn about what is going on, asking for international enquiries can have an effect. Do not underestimate the fact that China does care about its image in the global world and what people think about it in international organisations. Now, you could, of course, ask the question that if the sanctions are not strong enough, should we not adopt serious economic sanctions which would do real damage to China and probably also to us? This is a weighted decision with huge consequences. It is not actually what the US are doing either. The US have in place a very important economic agreement with China which they concluded at the time when the Chinese already behaved in a certain way vis-à-vis the Uyghur minority. Now, if we are being asked, as Europe, not to ratify our investment agreement, which the Commission recently negotiated, because of what goes on in Xinjiang, then, of course, I ask the question: should we not then ask the Americans to cancel their economic relationship with China? Which gives them, in the present situation, an advantage – or, them or their firms. So those are really difficult questions. My final remark on this would be that sanctions can be useful, and we certainly use them to good effect in some areas, but we cannot transform it into our overall policy. It will not help solve all the problems in the world. So this, in a nutshell, is what I want to say about sanctions. We could have a long debate about Europe’s ability to stand up for human rights in the world, but if strategic autonomy is not primarily intended to strengthen the defence of European values against authoritarian regimes outside Europe, what exactly are the problems for which strategic autonomy is the right solution? Which policy areas would be best addressed by the notion of strategic autonomy? Strategic autonomy is not about a particular policy. It is about having the means and powers to have a policy in the first place. It is about being able to look at our interests and our values and to defend them. If we do not defend our interests, we lose our values. Strategic autonomy starts at home, it concerns all our policies. The crises we faced recently have shown that we have some flaws in our system, we have some weaknesses. And we also maybe have a lack of strategic thinking. They obliged us to improvise and take measures, which we did, but the time, in my view, has come to have a much more proactive and coherent framework to look at this overall issue. And we can, of course, and we have to build on our experience drawn from the handling of the recent crises. Any meaningful reflection of this concept has to start with a thorough analysis of our weaknesses and strengths. You have to look at all the policy areas. You see policy areas like climate change where we can play a leading role. If you look at the whole history of it, we were the main defenders and implementers of the Kyoto Agreement, we stayed in the Paris Agreement even when the United States left it, we have a lot of support for doing the fight against climate change. So here, we certainly can take a leading role. We can definitely take a leading role in trade, but there are areas – like digital for instance – where we have some positive elements – notably in regulation – but in terms of innovation and investment we are not very good. We can maybe come back in more detail to this. Definitely also we must do more for our own security and defence, as the Americans are constantly reminding us. Let’s look further into various policy areas. In some, such as climate and trade, it seemed that European strategic autonomy would be best served by rebuilding a strong multilateral order. What main new global compromises should the EU try to broker in this decade? Climate change is a very good example, as I have mentioned already. And it makes a lot of sense to do this multilaterally. Why? Because we have to capture as many emissions as possible, that is why we need China in the system. And there is some good news because the Chinese government has certainly woken up to the need to do more for our climate, against climate change. And of course, the re-entry under President Biden of the United States into the Paris Agreement is excellent news. So we can certainly work on that. As I said, we have a strong position: over 90% of Europeans think that the fight against climate change is an absolute priority. I would also add that we last time talked about the MFF deal and the recovery deal – 1.8 trillion over the next seven years. 30% of that money will be spent on the fight against climate change. So we have a very strong position here. We, of course, have to do our homework. For instance, burden-sharing will be a very difficult internal debate. The Commission is about to propose a new way of doing the burden-sharing, so we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are in a good place. Concerning trade, I think there is now the possibility to relaunch the WTO, together with the Americans, but we should not be naïve. We cannot not just preach multilateralism and hope for everything to go right. We have to be prepared to defend our own interests when others do not play the game, so in other words: we need a toolkit of autonomous measures which we can take if others adopt unfair trade practices. And we have actually made quite a lot of progress on that in the last few years. The EU is taking measures to screen foreign investors in strategic sectors and to defend its Single Market against foreign subsidised companies, but is Europe also playing enough on the offensive? Does it invest enough in developing and rolling out key new technologies? What should Europe do to be more successful in setting global rules for digital platforms and virtual currencies? This is key point: strategic a utonomy cannot just be about taking defensive measures. If you take the digital field, for instance, of course we should adopt regulations setting limits to what our own companies and global companies can do on our markets. We have to fight cyber attacks obviously. But we must at the same time innovate, invest, and become stronger actors in ground-breaking technologies, because that is the way that you actually have an influence. Now, I find it almost a bit sad, as a European, that among the twenty first IT companies in the world, there is not a single European one. Where are the European champions, if I may put it that way? You mentioned norms. Norms are, of course very important, but may I remind you of what happened with mobile phones: we were the world leaders, and we set the standards, the norms, twenty years ago. We lost the competitive edge, and today we are not setting the norms any more, so this is a good example: we really have to both do regulation, and also to invest into the industry. Last remark in this respect: we are very proud about the regulation on data protection, and rightly so. In a way, we were the first in the world to regulate this. But we have to be a tiny bit careful that we do not end up in a situation where the Europeans have the protection and the Chinese and the Americans have the data, and the use of the data. The world of high-tech is indeed dominated by the US, and increasingly by China. European tech engineers are drawn to Silicon Valley. What should we do to transform Europe into more of an innovation centre? The first thing I would suggest is something relatively straightforward: it is to use our Single Market efficiently. To use the whole potential of our Single Market. It is a key asset for us, it allows us to be a regulatory superpower. But we have to be honest: there are yawning gaps in our Single Market and our Internal Market in terms of services, particularly in the digital field. And that, for very often parochial defensive reasons. There is also, if I am very honest, a bit of a lack of trust between Europeans: when the French and the Germans talk about European champions, many people around the table immediately think: “yes, they say European, they mean French and German”. So we should openly talk about those issues. Another example is to have a close look at value chains: that requires a close examination, to be led by the Commission. Where are we overdependent? Where should we have more of our own production? This is not being protectionist, it is caring about our wider security. I am pleased that we have finally come to talk about a European industrial policy. For a long time it was almost taboo: it sounded as though is you had an industrial policy, you were calling into question liberalism, the free market, and all of that. The fact of the matter is the market on its own does not solve problems, you still need an industrial policy. And the fact that there is no great power in the world that does not have, in some form or another, industrial policy. A final remark concerns the general attitude of Europeans, if I may say so: we have become too risk-averse. There are many Europeans who invent new technologies and products, but when they try to big on them, there is a lack of finance, there is some over-regulation, there is a lack of risk-taking. We need an environment that rewards risk-taking and innovation. This is really something we have to work on collectively. Indeed. On something else: how would a perfect European strategic autonomy look like in handling a global pandemic? I do not believe in perfect strategies, they do not exist. Neither in the EU nor anywhere else in the world. Practically all countries in the world have struggled with this pandemic, which had huge effects on them. As I said before, we should begin by drawing lessons from what has happened, and the Commission has recently presented a communication on this, which is the right way to do this. And the European Council of June looked at it last week. We have to draw the lessons. So what should we do in terms of stocks of equipment, for instance, or drugs? It would be useful to have some, we will have to work on that. What about pooling our resources? Definitely something we can do better. The lessons to be drawn from joint procurement are very important in this respect. There probably is a strong argument to create a framework to do this more regularly, and to use it as a precedent. We should maybe also look at the way EMA makes their decisions: maybe it should be possible to do things a bit faster than in the past, so those are a few issues which spring to mind immediately. Finally, again, it might be useful if the leaders could say something about the importance of public service, the importance of rewarding doctors, nurses, and emergency services. This is not directly an EU competence, but the moral authority of a statement by the EU Council about this would be invaluable. On security and defence: you mentioned recently that there is a new division of labour needed between NATO and the European Union. Territorial defence would remain under NATO’s lead, but the EU could take on some additional tasks. What would these be? It is good that we come to this question rather late in our discussion, because it is in a way the most complicated part. It is the policy where the term ‘strategic autonomy’ can create a lot of confusion and misunderstandings, and therefore distract from the necessary work on strategic autonomy across the board. I say this because of our history after the Second World War, where our hard security, our defence against military attacks, was actually done via NATO and via the transatlantic relationship. We should definitely not give the impression that completely want to change this, that we want to transform the EU into a military organisation taking over what is Article 5 in NATO about common defence. We are not talking about a European army, and we are not either trying to transform the EU fundamentally in this area, but what we want to do is to use the means and instruments of the EU to help us do better in our joint defence effort, including with the Americans. That is a useful clarification that the idea of strategic autonomy does not mean the creation of a European army. In what areas of defence policy is NATO too constrained and the EU could make a greater contribution?? What should the EU do? Quite a few things, actually. Some of them we are doing already, but we could do them better. For instance, we have a Coordinated Annual Review of Defence which gives us a very good picture of the state of armed forces across Europe. Secondly, we have what we call Structured Reinforced Cooperation, where countries work together on military projects with the help of the European Defence Agency. We should definitely do more in this respect. We also now have the European Defence Fund, which for the first time allows us to use EU money for military projects, so we have to get this right. And finally I would say: I mentioned before already the lack of strategic debate. Well, in this area we do need a strategic debate, and it is taking the shape right now of defining what in the jargon here is called a new ‘Compass’, a strategic compass. The idea is to come forward with a concept of this type in the French Presidency very soon. I think this is very important because it also helps us to better reflect on our relationship with NATO. Concerning relations with NATO, I recently read another article by Sven Biscop, who I quoted already, which was about EU-NATO relations, and his call was having a fresh look at division of labour between the two. He says it is clear that on hard security the leader will be NATO, but the EU can contribute more than it has done in the past. If you talk about our defence against non-military threats, the EU should be leader, because the EU can deal with far more policies than NATO for obvious reasons. And if you talk, for instance, about civil and military actions, particularly in our neighbourhood, where the EU has accumulated, over the last ten or fifteen years, quite a lot of experience, they should be under the leadership of the EU but NATO could do more to help us with information, means, intelligence, and all of that. My final remark here would be to say that I very much hope that the Biden administration, contrary to all the preceding administrations, will show less suspicion whenever the EU tries to do issues like that. Because we were in the funny situation where the Americans were all the time calling on us to do more, and whenever we did so within the EU, they say “oh, you are calling into question NATO”. We have to change the paradigm here, because the way we want to strengthen our input is for us to decide. And if we want to use the EU, we should do that. We should, of course, do it in full transparency with the Americans, explain why we are doing it and what we are doing, because after all most of our member countries are part of NATO together with the Americans. Earlier I asked you how to strengthen the EU’s political union, and you pointed to a need for a better understanding of the world, a reflection on the EU’s place, and an honest assessment of EU interests and values. Do you think it is feasible to agree among the 27 on one concrete vision of what strategic autonomy should mean for Europe? Definitely try to do that, but for me there will be no end product, it will be a process which will take a lot of time. Let me briefly summarise the main points I was making during this discussion. The first one is that the present debate really arises out of necessity: there is a need to think about those issues because of the crisis, because of the world as it is. And as I said before, strategic autonomy is a way to structure this debate. Secondly, we have seen that the EU is more resilient than many people think. We talked about that when we looked at the handling of COVID and the handling of the crisis last time. There have been a lot of reactions, but they have been done in a rather haphazard way, and in a crisis mode. It is now time to move to a more structured discussion a framework, to draw all the lessons from what we have been doing, and to set in motion a process and a methodology to strengthen our strategic autonomy. The third point is that we need a new approach to how we look at the world and a better reflection on our own place on the global chessboard. Next, we need a hard-headed analysis of our strengths and weaknesses. This sounds banal, but how do you want to build up your strengths or fight you weaknesses if you do not have a clear picture of them, so we have to absolutely go through all our policies and do this. And of course, as always in the EU, we have to think a bit about our governance, maybe adapt some of the affects, get more executive capacity, think about a ‘Team Europe’ approach which will help us to use all the resources both of the EU Institutions but also of our Member States. When I look at what we have done over the last years, I am fairly optimistic about this. Some people say we have to change the Treaty to do this. I think our institutional framework is fine, basically, it does not prevent us from doing a lot things. Of course, it can happen that we come to the conclusion, for instance if we want to build a health union, that we need a change of Treaty – then we should do it. There should be no veto about this, we should be open to look at this, but we should not start from the assumption that we should launch a big institutional debate: we should concentrate now on doing what requires doing. I think we can do it, we have shown in 2020, with the handling of the COVID crisis, that we can do it. We can actually use crises to reinvent the European Union. Thank you Jim for this optimistic conclusion, and for all your insights on the notion of strategic autonomy. Thank you. And thank you all for watching this fourth episode of EuropeChats. We will be back in September with new themes. Meanwhile please do check out our previous episodes on YouTube or our new podcast ‘Europe Speaks’ on Spotify. See you in September!