Geopoliticization of EU Trade Policy: Assessing the Scope of EU Renew Assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific

Over the recent years, the global trade activities of the European Union (EU) have gained significant attention due to the increasing importance of strategic factors in economic exchanges. The Ukraine war has fuelled these ongoing dynamics with the European Commission making public declarations of its intention to evolve into a geopolitical player; thereby amplifying economic shifts and transformations that this aspiration entails. While schoolars capture this ongoing shift through concept such as "geopoliticization" or "weaponization", few works have been operated to spot concrete changes in EU's trade and foreign policy. To address this gap, this paper proposed to assess the extent to which geopoliticization has affected its trade policy toward Indo-Pacific. To do so, this paper relies on three case study three namely: EU-China Strategic Outlook, New Indo-Pacific Strategy, and New Eu-China strategy. Data collection encompasses official text, working documents, parliamentary debate and grey literature related to the adoption of those text. Findings highlights new features of EU trade policy toward Indo-pacific enabling this paper to emphasize symptoms of the ongoing geopoliticization process. This chapter offers new perspective on the strategic turn of EU trade policy. Ultimately, it led to further discussion on the origin of this change as an interinstitutional debate.