COMBINING SOFT POWER WITH THE GEOPOLITICAL APPROACH - HOW DIFFICULT IS FOR THE EU TO CHANGE ITS ATTITUDE?

Abstract

After gradually evolving from an economic project to a political one, European Union leaders declare nowadays that it is time to go forward and to build a geopolitical actor on the international stage. This paper does make an account on the current stage of relevant geopolitical actors and how they view EU. In order to address this issue, EU have to focus more on its soft power instruments, like multilateralism and the promotion of democracy, rule of law and human rights, and also climate change, apart from hard power instruments like trade, security and defense, cybersecurity and data privacy.Keywords: democracy, European Union, geopolitics, human rights, multilateralism, rule of law, soft power.