Is the European Union an Economic Nationalist on the Rise?

Amid growing geopolitical competition, it has become commonplace to diagnose the global economy with a return of nationalism. From international trade to industrial strategy, economic policy seems increasingly caught in the tight grip of nationalists. The European Union has long been considered the antithesis of any brand of nationalism. Yet, some scholars now point to a growing trend of “supranational nationalism” or “supranational patriotism” in the EU’s economic policy. These assessments, however, have not yet moved beyond the stage of supposition and suffer from some of the same weaknesses as those found in the broader scholarship on economic nationalism. In addition to conceptual confusion and tenuous links to theories of nationalism, an understanding of economic nationalism as primarily a matter of tariffs and subsidies still reigns supreme. This persists despite long-standing calls for an ideational approach to economic nationalism, and arguments that not only protectionist but also liberal economic policies may be underpinned by a normative stance that deliberately favours a single nation or a supranational patrie. In this contribution, I argue for a perspective that, without losing sight of political action, takes seriously the discursive dimension of nationalist thought and economic policy. Moreover, I offer a novel angle on how to interpret the EU’s latest economic policy evolution and its international and national repercussions. After discussing the added value of different conceptions of economic nationalism, my contribution turns to the European Union and the question of whether recent policy developments should be understood as a profound shift in the underlying philosophies of European economic thought, or whether the “thin ideology” of nationalism merely constitutes the latest guise of the EU’s resilient economic liberalism. To this end, I draw on Vivien Schmidt’s discursive institutionalism, combining a policy perspective with an ideational understanding of nationalism and the economy to reveal the underlying ideas in the “policies, programmes, and philosophies” that shape Europe’s economic stance. I apply the discursive-institutionalist lens to the NextGenerationEU programme - the EU’s so-called “Hamiltonian moment” - and the Global Gateway strategy, often regarded as a break with traditional EU cosmopolitanism. Ultimately, I argue that what has occurred goes beyond tariffs and subsidies and has important implications for how we understand the shifting normative foundations of economic action and their consequences in Europe and beyond.