EU’s Ontological Security, Trade Wars, and Resource Rivalry: A Test of Confidence in the European Project

This paper focuses on the EU’s ontological security in the face of trade wars and resource rivalry that threaten the purpose of its economic and political integration. We approach this issue from the perspective of analysing the roles that institutionally expressed emotions play in enabling or constraining policy action by justifying, locking-in or locking-out possible policy options. Even though looming trade wars are mostly associated with the second Trump administration, China’s systemic rivalry, issues regarding EU’s economic security, and weaponisation of resources have been gaining salience since before President Trump’s second term. The EU has been a proponent of liberal trade, while diligently regulating its single market, making these two aspects significant components of its global identity (Damro 2015; Wagner 2017; Bradford 2020). This paper takes forward the previous framework of analysis on how institutionally expressed emotions by EU institutions enable or constrain eventual policy action in EU foreign policy by justifying, locking-in and locking-out certain policy options (Gürkan and Terzi, 2024). We found that institutionally expressed emotions are linked to concerns, interests and values that constitute the ontological security of the EU, but their role on bring out policy (in)action depend on how certain issues are institutionally perceived and framed. In this paper, we argue that the looming trade wars under the Trump II administration, its opposition to multilateralism, and its perception of the EU as expressed in the latest US National Security Strategy, as well as the dilemmas the EU faces in engaging with China as a systemic rival, and the necessity for de-regulation for increasing the global competitiveness of the EU as explained in the Draghi Report challenge the roles and values that the EU has upheld in the international arena since its foundation. These developments threaten the EU’s ontological security and present a test of confidence for the EU in the values that it has internationally upheld for decades by triggering frustration, anxiety, hope, and (lack of) confidence. At a time when so much is at stake for the EU with regard to its existence as a political entity and to its values that build its ontological security, this paper carries out an emotion discourse analysis (Koschut 2018) of EU documents and of the public speeches by the Commission president von der Leyen and HR/VPs Josep Borell and Kaja Kallas on economic security, global partnerships, critical raw materials, and on defence technology and innovation since the initiation of the Global Gateway in 2021. Based on this data, we contribute to the theoretical discussions around geopolitics and European security by introducing learning processes and feedback-loops through time to better understand the policy enabling and constraining impact of institutionally expressed emotions.