Euromemo Conference Athens 22-23 September 2025 (Preliminary draft)
The world economy is not anymore a multipolar world, but clearly tends towards a bipolar one since the global trade war launched by Donald Trump with a major confrontation between US and China. The EU is neither a pole, nor a commercial power, but a widely open market, only governed by competition, lagging behind in the high tec, with a manufacturing basis deeply affected. The emerging countries, apart from China, are an heterogenous group. An “active non alignment” is claimed by some of them with pragmatism, but also sometimes with opportunism. In a context of growing skepticism downwards revision of the climate policies is observed in the EU. In the US the turnaround is brutal with Trump. For the future the four European scenarios presented are unequally likely or desirable. They do not fit in the same time horizon. The first one reflects the pursuit of the fragmentation of the EU with its inability to solve its problems of institutional inconsistencies and to overcome its divergences of economic interests and political orientation. The fear of bursting leads to a soft compromise with weak positions facing the conflict US-China, a de facto alignment on the US pole, a slow growth and a downward revision of the environment policy. The second scenario describes how protectionist measures can be presented as an answer to the previous blocking. It could be settled in a limited way or in a wilder perspective with a policy of disobedience to the EU treatises and a more important break up with the neo-liberal model. The third scenario corresponds to the federalist trend which appears as a logical response to the inconsistencies of the current EU. But the resistance to such a project remains high. Even a project of a hard core of countries ready to move on to political union seems confronted to many obstacles. The fourth scenario is more optimistic and based on the emergence of a new multilateralism centered on the necessity of an environmental policy thought out in its global dimension with a relaunch of international monetary cooperation. This scenario is more on the long term and could happen after a chaotic period following the burst of a financial and economic crisis.
