COVID-19 Reveals Europe’s Strategic Loneliness IAI Papers 20 | 40 - November 2020

The COVID-19 crisis has not only revealed a world that has moved into an age of interdependence and competition, it has also laid bare Europe’s strategic loneliness and vulnerability.

The pandemic has degraded the perception of the role played by the main world powers, especially the United States and China. The main challenge for Europe will be to review its place in the world and its interactions with the main powers, starting with the United States. Despite an improvement in tone of the transatlantic relationship under a Biden administration, the next US president will have to give priority to domestic issues and look for reliable partners. The European Union has no other option than to present itself as a capable and credible player. Its capacity to assert itself as a pole of stability by defusing tensions in its neighbourhood and improving regional security will be the ultimate test regarding its ambition to become a geopolitical power.

Éric André Martin is Secretary General of the Study Committee on Franco-German Relations at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris.

This paper was presented in a joint webinar on transatlantic relations by the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP), organised in cooperation with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Compagnia di San Paolo, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Rome Office) and the US Embassy to Italy on 5 November 2020. In the closed-door webinar, US and European experts and diplomats gathered to discuss the future of transatlantic relations.