The Geopoliticization of EU Trade Policy: Exploring the Growing Links Between the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Commercial Policy

For a long time, foreign policy and trade were separated from each other in the European Union (EU). Although certain links have always existed between them, in the past the creation of such nexuses often generated constitutional tensions in the EU’s legal order and sparked controversies surrounding the choice of appropriate legal basis. This article aims to show that, since the birth of the geopolitical Commission, the traditional boundaries of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) have been blurred to the extent that it no longer makes sense to draw a strict line between these external policies. The geopolitical Commission has been the engine behind the transformation of EU external relations with its decision to align economic and foreign policy in a more strategic fashion. Although this article represents an effort to analyse the new legal developments in EU external relations, to some extent this research considers internal and external factors affecting EU law that go beyond traditional legal approaches, including the tectonic shifts in the global economy that triggered political reactions by the geopolitical Commission to use trade competences for CFSP purposes.