GEOPOLITICAL DETERMINANTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION’S FOREIGN TRADE STRATEGY IN LIGHT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The Covid-19 pandemic has generated significant humanitarian, political, and economic turmoil since its onset in early 2020. The crisis has since spread throughout the entire world with an overwhelmingly negative impact. At the European Union level, both the initial reaction and the uneven economic outcome across member states pointed to an underlying lack of political and economic cohesion, as well as stark vulnerabilities in its foreign trade network. Current research has explored these topics as well as on several public statements by the European Union’s leadership revealing a potential shift in the European Union’s geopolitical and geoeconomic outlook. The aim of the present paper is to determine the fundamental principles that guide this shift. The present paper investigates the European Union’s current situation, the climate in its immediate vicinity as well its recent actions and trends and, using an intelligence analysis technique known as the linchpin analysis, seeks to discover the core reasons that underlie the EU’s foreign trade strategy. The main findings reveal that the European Union’s current climate and insufficient attention directed to common geopolitical goals call for urgent actions, lest centrifugal forces threaten to further undermine its growth and development.