Geoeconomic Faultlines? Party-political cleavages on EU geoeconomic instruments

In a context of mounting geopolitical pressures and heightened competition for technological dominance, the EU has recently adopted a series of instruments to catch up with the economic statecraft displayed by China and the United States. However, the EU’s attempt to develop its economic statecraft is proving difficult due to internal contestation, particularly when the adopted geoeconomic policies need to be implemented into concrete measures. The aim of this paper is to examine party-political cleavages on geoeconomic policies, focusing on European parliamentary positions on four instruments that encapsulate the geoeconomic turn in trade policy: the FDI Screening Regulation, the International Procurement Instrument (IPI), the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), and the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI). Preliminary findings based on an own- gathered dataset on amendments suggest that the seeming cross-party support of the four instruments concealed various, sometimes even contradicting preferences. Uncovering these conflicting positions is crucial in understanding how the heightened global power rivalries are affecting the politics of the European Parliament, which can further shed light on the political barriers for the EU to develop the aspired economic statecraft.