Geopolitical Europe Pulse: international cooperation beyond Europe
20 September 2024
Next week, heads of state and government will gather in New York City for the UN General Assembly high-level debate, which starts on Tuesday, 24 September. In recent years, votes at the UN General Assembly, be in on Ukraine or Gaza, have clearly demonstrated to Europeans and their traditional allies that their opinion is anything but global consensus, and that European foreign policy has for long insufficiently focused on partners outside the Europe. This week’s edition of the Geopolitical Europe Pulse brings you a compilation of articles on the concept of the “Global South” and Europe’s cooperation with states other than its traditional allies.
On the agenda: Before the high-level debate starts, the first UN Summit for the Future will focus on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals; on the European side, several foreign ministers or heads of state or government are confirmed as participants, and Commission President von der Leyen will represent the EU. All information on the debates next week are available here.
The concept of a “Global South”: The concept of the “Global South” has become increasingly yet often inconsistently used in recent years, mostly to describe states outside the transatlantic alliance or its traditional allies like Japan, Australia or New Zealand; however, the term is highly contested. This article sums up the debates on the concept and presents alternatives.
A paradigm shift: “The return of the Global South”, published in Foreign Affairs in summer 2023, focuses on the criticism of the newly (re)discovered Western interest in cooperation with states in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Recommendations for engagement: Cooperation with African, Asian, and Latin American states on global issues is a challenging endeavour for Europeans, as they seek to adapt to increasing complexity of the international system and to rebuild their credibility and legitimacy. The article “Europe and the Global South. How to gain influence and credibility in a complex world” provides a deep dive into the challenges and suggests a way forward.
The EU’s Strategic Partnerships: The EU increasingly relies on building so-called “Strategic Partnerships” as a format for enhancing cooperation with non-EU partners. The scope and thematic focus of these partnerships vary, and partnerships exist both with individual countries or regional groupings. The article “The EU’s global strategic partner(ship): a tool for the maturation of European foreign policy?”, published in the most recent volume of European Security, unpacks these partnerships and elaborates on their implications for European foreign policy.