The EU Is Moving on From Neoliberalism

The European Union, which was born in 1993 and sired by the Maastricht Treaty, was a child of neoliberalism: the doctrine of market supremacy and government restraint that swept the world from the 1980s onward. Globalization and the single market provided the EU with a growth engine; the single currency and the EU regulatory authorities drove integration; and an extensive system of contracting out sustained the EU’s sense that it was a special place, at the forefront of progress. Provided the Chinese did the manufacturing, the US paid for defense and the Russians provided the energy, the EU could afford both a generous welfare state and a green transition.

The global backlash against neoliberalism has finally reached Brussels. I spent last weekend engaged in a very EU activity — discussing the future of the organization with Euro-wonks in a delightful Tuscan village — and everybody seemed to agree about this epochal change. We were enveloped in a billowing word cloud of new phrases to add to “industrial strategy,” as celebrated in the Draghi report : “regime zero...US de-risking…the arsenal of democracy…made in/with Europe…AI sovereignty…military Keynesianism…European defense/IT/democracy bonds…and choke points.”