For the last two years, the war in Ukraine has attracted the attention of academics. However, the EU’s competition with the US and, particularly, China, due to its condition as a systemic rival, in the economic realm has continued to grow. That is why the aim of the present communication is to evaluate the EU’s geoeconomics tools that have been developed in recent years. Geoeconomics, following Blackwill & Harrys (2016:20) can be understood as “the use of economic instruments to promote and defend national interests, and to produce beneficial geopolitical results; and the effects of other nations’ economic actions on a country’s geopolitical goals”. The approval of the FDI screening mechanism in 2019, the International Procurement Instrument in 2022, or the Foreign Subsidies Regulation in 2023 signal the development of these tools. The proposal will seek to comparatively analyse these three instruments together with equivalent norms approved in China and the US. For that, regulatory documents as well as the few applied cases (mainly for the FDI screening mechanism) will be accounted for using literature review and elite interviews. Similarly, after conducting the review, information gathered from the research will be used to indicate policy reforms that the EU might pursue in order to strength its external action toolbox.

Blackwill, R. & Harris, J. (2016), War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, Harvard University Press.