Why post-Brexit EU needs to assert itself internationally

EUROPEAN leaders met last Friday to discuss the continent's place in the world. Post-Brexit, the flux in the EU's foreign policy is an important, but much overlooked, outcome of UK withdrawal.

There are several discussions underway in early 2021 over the role of the Brussels-based club in a more complex, multipolar Europe and world. Friday saw discussion of two of these, including developing the EU's partnerships in security and defence such as established cooperation with NATO. The second discussion centred around increasing the EU's ability to act autonomously and to promote its strategic interests and values globally and regionally. On this latter issue, Brexit has "created" a new non-EU power, the United Kingdom, in Western Europe and this development is already changing the EU's relationship with other non-EU European countries in the region, including one of the world's other principal financial centres, Switzerland.

EU action may be needed not only to deal with the changes that the UK's exit brings to European geopolitics, but also to deal with wider global trends of which Brexit is only one. Europe already feels the pull of different world powers, especially the United States and China, and it also struggles locally with the geopolitical disruptions of Turkey and Russia.