The Geopolitics of (Dis)Integration

Luuk Schmitz

Investigating how Europe’s geopolitical and geoeconomic entanglements shape the dynamics of European integration and disintegration, this research challenges existing theories of EU integration by emphasizing the impact of global economic shifts on the European project. It explores how Europe’s evolving geoeconomic predicament – understood as the uneven entanglement of sectors and firms in global value chains – gives rise to political conflict among member states, EU institutions, and in the European Parliament. An examination of historical precedents and contemporary shifts in energy, technology, and security aims to explain why current geopolitical pressures are pulling member states apart, contrary to past crises that fostered integration. The project will analyze production networks and firm-level data to provide a fine-grained understanding of Europe’s evolving geoeconomic predicament. Next, it will use this data to explore how geoeconomic fault lines predict political conflict, shedding light on the future trajectory of the European single market in an era of global economic uncertainty.