An Evermore Geoeconomic European Union? Exploring Critical Perspectives for Future Research

Sjorre Couvreur and Jaša Veselinovič

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2026, vol. 64, issue 1, 431-448

Abstract: In response to a more contentious and geopolitically fractious international environment, the European Union's (EU) approach to international economic policies has in recent years undergone a significant shift, often referred to as the EU's ‘geoeconomic turn’. Whilst valuable academic and policy work has explored this ongoing shift, there is a general tendency to see geoeconomics as either required and beneficial or a sad imposition on a reluctant EU in a changing global economic landscape. However, as geoeconomics is likely here to stay, we argue that it is high time for EU studies to engage more critically with this geoeconomic turn. This entails a deeper examination of the geoeconomic turn's broader implications for social inequalities, exploitation, power disparities and changing hierarchies within the EU and internationally. More concretely, we put forward four perspectives that could inform future critical research on the geoeconomic turn. Drawing on work in other disciplines and at the EU studies' fringes, we first argue for critically historicising the geoeconomic turn's supposed newness and for recentring human development in thinking about the EU's geoeconomic turn. We then explore the changing modalities of business power entailed by the geoeconomic turn and the importance of studying its social purpose. By addressing these underexplored questions, we aim to provide a first, non‐exhaustive step for future research towards a more critical understanding of the complexities and potential power consequences of the EU's evolving economic strategy.

Date: 2026
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