Neo-liberalism by default? The European Union’s trade and development policy in an era of crisis

Abstract

This article investigates whether or not the dominance of neo-liberalism in the European Union’s (EU’s) trade and development politics has been moderated by the global economic crisis and the changing global economic order. It combines the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with critical forms of international political economy. It demonstrates how neo-liberalism has infused the EU’s approach, and the concept of interdiscursivity is used to analyse how neo-liberalism is articulated with other discourses, and how this has evolved. Key policy discourses and nodal discourses are traced in two major EU texts on trade and development. The one from 2002 articulates a strongly neo-liberal vision of globalisation, free market reform and inter-regional integration. In the 2012 document, the sense of a neo-liberal trajectory is downplayed and a more realist geoeconomic discourse emerges. A review of the EU’s other texts and its behaviour reveals a tougher approach, which creates a new subset of worthy developing countries and treats the others as emerging rivals. In conclusion, the core tenets of neo-liberalism are still present, however, they are embedded in a new policy configuration and geoeconomic context.