I have a column out today that takes a broadly positive view of the European Union’s strategy on China. That strategy seems to me the brightest line of the struggling new geopolitical Union being developed in Brussels. The column goes some way towards explaining why that is the case, but I wanted to add a couple points directly related to how the EU compares to the United States when it comes to China.
The EU always had a PR problem. The old one was an "internal" one, where member states' public has accused the EU of being slow, byzantine, bureaucratic, democracy-deficient, socialistic, and globalistic. That mostly went away with the mess of Brexit and MS outsourcing more and more powers to the EU level.
The new one is "external". The EU does not have the media and think-tanky clout based on organizations with a deep understanding of the EU inner mechanics and EU insider knowledge (politico.eu is the exception here). As a result, the EU utterly fails when its interests are in opposition with interests of the UK or the US, which can count on their media and policy institutions, that they will understand the point-of-view of the UK or the US government and will inevitably misunderstand the EU's point-of-view (examples: EU vaccine exports v. EU vaccine nationalism; AstraZeneca's breach of contract with the EU v. EU losing the court ruling; the CAI deal as being anti-US v. controlling China's labor market and matching access for European companies to what American ones already have).
The EU always had a PR problem. The old one was an "internal" one, where member states' public has accused the EU of being slow, byzantine, bureaucratic, democracy-deficient, socialistic, and globalistic. That mostly went away with the mess of Brexit and MS outsourcing more and more powers to the EU level.
The new one is "external". The EU does not have the media and think-tanky clout based on organizations with a deep understanding of the EU inner mechanics and EU insider knowledge (politico.eu is the exception here). As a result, the EU utterly fails when its interests are in opposition with interests of the UK or the US, which can count on their media and policy institutions, that they will understand the point-of-view of the UK or the US government and will inevitably misunderstand the EU's point-of-view (examples: EU vaccine exports v. EU vaccine nationalism; AstraZeneca's breach of contract with the EU v. EU losing the court ruling; the CAI deal as being anti-US v. controlling China's labor market and matching access for European companies to what American ones already have).