The book concludes by bringing the different themes of this work together, considering the potential futures for the EU as the Geopolitical Union, reflecting upon how regulatory mercantilism could be a useful framework for analysis of policies beyond technology, and beyond the EU, and potential future avenues for research based on these reflections.

Chapter 4 covers the policy agenda of the von der Leyen Commission as it relates to technology, identifying the concerns over ensuring digital sovereignty and maintaining strategic autonomy as central rationales for Commission action. Chapter 4 focuses on ‘technological systems’ in which the EU has sought to increase its control and regulatory oversight through regulatory mercantilist means. Analysing the Commission’s actions in technical standards for technologies such as digital communications, life-cycle cybersecurity for internet-enabled products, and the fostering of an EU industrial policy for semiconductors and microchips, this chapter highlights how concerns over foreign manipulation and excessive strategic dependencies has resulted in the Commission proposing legislative interventions in order to guarantee sovereignty and strategic autonomy through increased Commission and regulatory body oversight, the explicit linkage of economic and security concerns, and active promotion of technology industrial policy internally, and exporting of norms and values through ensuring a positive regulatory balance of trade externally.

Chapter 7 considers the developments that have taken place since the beginning of the von der Leyen II Commission, identifying how there has not only been continuity in the EU’s approach to technology control and its links to digital sovereignty but also an expansion and reinforcement of the approach. Faced with increased instability and geopolitical threat, the linkage of security and economy has become even more explicit for the von der Leyen II Commission, with the Competitiveness Compass taking an approach that appears to be a more assertive form of regulatory mercantilism, in which the element of defence is specifically incorporated into the EU’s rationale for action, with an expansion of technology controls including the development of an explicit push for defence technology industrial policy, the increased control over external dependencies and supply chains through its Preparedness Strategy, and an AI policy for Europe that includes significant investments for AI gigafactories.

Chapter 6 considers the Commission’s intent to reduce critical dependencies on third-country-based data servers and computing capabilities. It explores the Brussels effect as a motivator for further action on exporting regulatory norms concerning the protection of personal data and non-personal data, coupled with concerns over lack of competitiveness in data-derived commercial activity, particularly in the field of AI. Concerns over competitiveness impacting Europe’s security, and the risks posed by unauthorised access to industrial or sensitive data from the governments in third countries, the Commission desires increased regulatory control. This is facilitated by industrial policy aimed at both promoting European data server infrastructure and encouraging switching to those Common European Data Spaces as a means of building up a European data economy, while placing strict limitations on the export of non-personal data outside of Europe’s borders. The Commission combines this with an attempt to utilise the Brussels effect to ensure that European standards concerning the safe use of AI technologies become global standards shaped by the EU and its values.

This introduction to the book sets the context for the larger work – the European Commission’s declaration of the existence of the Geopolitical Union and the approach to technology it is taking. This approach, more interventionist and assertive, can be framed as regulatory mercantilist – combining economic and security goals, promoting increased regulatory oversight and industrial policy inside the EU, and seeking to promote its rules, values, and norms externally, in a form of ‘regulatory balance of trade’. This part of the book provides a structure for the rest of the book to allow for the development of its theoretical approach, case studies, and consideration of the future of the Geopolitical Union.

The chapter focuses on how the European Union (EU) and European powers have struggled to navigate between transatlantic alliance and growing Eurasian connectivity, which is energized recently by China’s rise. When first proposed by the EU in 2016, “strategic autonomy” was about the European search for independent capacity to militarily balance against the Russian power. When applied to Asia, the concept is mainly about Europe’s choice in a region, which is fast becoming the center of the global political economy but is increasingly dominated by US-China competition. With the EU labeling China “a systemic rival,” the multipolarization behind European strategic autonomy has hardly unfolded as envisioned by Beijing. The chapter first examines Europe’s limited presence in Asian security and addresses the unfulfilled transatlantic potential under the US rebalance towards Asia during the Obama administration. Next it analyzes the European search for strategic autonomy amid the emerging great-power competition in the Indo-Pacific. Finally it examines the geoeconomics associated with the Belt and Road Initiative and Europe’s broad relationship with China.