The issue of Kosovo’s contested statehood has kept Brussels busy for more than ten years now. Advancing on this front is more pressing than ever in the new geopolitical context forged by the Russian war in Ukraine. What is at stake is not only the resolution of a sensitive bilateral dispute that has become noxious for the whole region, but also the EU’s quest for strategic autonomy, which can only be achieved through greater convergence on such issues.
The European Union (EU) has long aspired to a stronger and more coherent foreign and security policy. With the Lisbon Treaty, it upgraded the position of High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and created a new diplomatic service, the European External Action Service (EEAS) to help it achieve this objective. Although progress has been made in a number of areas, including in defense cooperation, the EU is still far from having a unified, coherent and effective external policy, while the departure of the United Kingdom has diminished its economic, political and military weight. However, as the international environment has drastically changed, awareness of the need for Europe to be able to act more autonomously and decisively has risen substantially in recent years. The instability in the EU’s neighborhood has been aggravated by Russia’s aggressive policies, while the challenges resulting from China’s rise became increasingly apparent. At the same time, American unilateralism under President Trump severely undermined confidence in the transatlantic alliance.
The world is rapidly changing, and Europe is striving to find its place. In the debates over European sovereignty, the issues frequently revolve around diplomacy, defence and occasionally industrial policy, but only rarely finance. The most noteworthy advance in European construction was undoubtedly the single currency, but the European Union (EU) could make much better use of its strengths in the financial area. It took the global financial crisis for common regulatory rules governing finance to be adopted and for their control to be entrusted to European supervisory authorities. Even today, the domestic financial services market remains fragmented and the euro’s geopolitical role unfulfilled. Yet the strategic nature of the financial stakes is evidenced by several factors.
First, financing innovation is essential to remain internationally competitive. The climate transition alone requires massive investments, without which it will be impossible to achieve the target of reducing CO2 emissions to zero by 2050. Bridging the technology gap also requires substantial capital, in this case with a special twist: not only is finance indispensable for innovation, but innovation transforms finance. Tech companies, on the strength of their customer data, are also entering the payments market (e.g. Facebook with its Diem/Libra project).
Alongside these structural changes, cyclical factors also come into play. The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments to provide unprecedented and massive financial support…
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