 ‘Europe and the Rest’ in Official EU Discourse: Legitimising ‘Geopolitical Europe’ Through the ‘Jungle’ Analogy and BeyondMünevver Cebeci Journal of Common Market Studies, 2025, vol. 63, issue 5, 1438-1459 Abstract: This article critically assesses how the European Union (EU) constructs the identities of ‘EU‐Europe’ and ‘the rest of the world’ to legitimise the formation of a ‘geopolitical Europe’. It draws on poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives within the spirit of scholarly allyship, deconstructing texts produced by key EU officials – Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel and Josep Borrell – between 2019 and 2023. The article manifests how civilisational binaries are employed to justify the EU's transition from normative power to power politics. It problematises the ‘EU versus the rest of the world’ framing and, particularly, Borrell's ‘garden–jungle’ analogy, exposing their neocolonial underpinnings. Through an intertextual second reading, it shows how depicting the EU as a peaceful and civilised ‘garden’ and the rest of the world as a conflictual and disorderly ‘jungle’ reinforces civilisational hierarchies. The article argues that these binaries not only legitimise the EU's increasingly securitised foreign policy but also reproduce colonial‐era tropes of the mission civilisatrice, perpetuating a Eurocentric worldview. Date: 2025 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:63:y:2025:i:5:p:1438-1459 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.