Institutional collaboration and contestation within the European Commission due to geopoliticisation: the case of the Global Gateway

Abstract

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n 2021, the European Commission launched the Global Gateway initiative, with the goal of making the European Union a more effective global actor and to raise its geopolitical profile. Nevertheless, the nature of an initiative that entails collaboration across services with different and sometimes competing objectives is likely to produce relevant institutional effects on the European Commission’s internal work. This study unpacks the institutional effects propelled by the EC’s efforts to support the EU’s geopolitical turn, and discusses the related consequences. Through an in-depth analysis based on a wide array of expert analyses and an original set of interviews with European Commission’s officials involved in the Global Gateway planning and implementation, this article contributes to the literature on the geopoliticisation of the European Union by studying its effects on the internal work of one of its main institutions, in this case, the European Commission.