EU Regional Trade Agreements as a Tool for Global Adaptation

The EU maintains its great power status based on its trade, economic and normative (structural) power. The EU’s large-scale and highly differentiated system of regional trade agreements (RTAs) represents a power projection tool in the context of multipolar world order formation. In accordance with the hypothesis that the ongoing inter-regional expansion of the EU’s RTAs network is a factor of geopolitical rivalry with the US and China, the authors assessed the “mercantilist effect”, i.e. an increase in GDP. The latter is achieved within the framework of the EU’s bilateral trade agreements (1) in force, (2) notified (early announced), calculating the foreign trade balance for the entire set of goods and for environmental goods and comparing the data obtained with the results of the EU trade with the US and China. The study showed that the EU’s presence in the markets of the RTA partner states provides an increase in GDP, comparable in size and sustainability to the effect of trade with the US. Currently, the EU does not receive similar advantages in trade with partners under the notified agreements. In goods supply the EU has strategic resource potential (self-sufficiency) and displays it in the framework of both in-force and notified RTAs as well as in its trade with the US, only China demonstrates an advantage in this area in comparison to the EU. Thus, the EU’s strategy for regional trade agreements expansion, characterized by an inter-regional approach and a major economic pragmatism, fits into the logic of mercantilism, representing a tool for global adaptation, since it is able to provide advantages within the framework of great power rivalry and a “green” transition.