Balancing EU Values and Interests in a Geopolitical World
The EU’s vision of multilateralism within its own borders was created to counterbalance the power politics of the major European States. This ideal has also been promoted externally, through the EU’s vision of the international rules-based order, where trade and foreign aid have served as means to promote EU values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. But in a more hostile multipolar and less multilateral world, that narrative has been shifting towards interests, creating tensions in EU external relations that require the EU to balance and prioritise competing values, objectives and interests. Can the EU retain its normative character while effectively protecting its interests in the new international order? This question ultimately also exposes the constraints of the EU as a geopolitical actor.
What are EU values and interests, and how should they be balanced?
While values remain abstract, they are clearly grounded in EU Treaties as common to all Member States, and their content can be ascertained through different sources of EU law, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights, constitutional principles and the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). EU institutions are required to uphold them not only internally but also externally.
In contrast, EU interests are not clearly defined in Treaties, which only define EU objectives, a category that surpasses the narrower concept of interests as it includes “greater good” goals that seek to benefit the world as a whole. The meaning of interests is thus more fluid, depending on the specific area of EU external action, and more subject to the politics of the day, with the European Council tasked with identifying EU’s strategic interests and objectives. In the narrower traditional category of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), a key role remains with Member States, which should nevertheless show mutual solidarity and refrain from any action which is contrary to EU interests or could impair the effectiveness of EU action.
Because the Treaties establish no clear hierarchy, they do not resolve the tension between them; instead, they require EU institutions to balance, mediate and prioritise between competing objectives, interests and values. However, that discretion is not unlimited as acts that depart from EU values may be challenged and ultimately annulled by the CJEU. An important exception is the CFSP, where the Treaties in principle exclude the jurisdiction of the CJEU, particularly with respect to acts that directly relate to the Union’s strategic or political choices.
Trade and migration are two areas of EU external action that exemplify the competing pressures the EU faces in promoting its rules-based character in a global context increasingly driven by security interests.
Trade: From “Trade for All” to competitiveness and economic security
Trade is the field in which the EU has established itself as an influential global actor with exclusive competence to act on behalf of its Member States. Traditionally, EU trade has required different trade-offs between commercial interests and non-trade objectives. With the return of the security dimension into the economy, a development foreign to the spirit of open trade enshrined in EU Treaties, trade has become a strategic foreign policy tool.
While EU trade policy has long been presented as a vehicle for promoting EU values, a greater focus has more recently been placed on competitiveness and economic security. The 2015 “Trade for All” focused heavily on the promotion of values through EU trade and investment agreements as a goal in its own right, which would benefit everyone. The 2021 “Open, Sustainable and Assertive” trade policy more specifically sought to position the EU as a norm-setter in emerging green and digital trade, to benefit rather than lose from more progressive standards, thus serving both EU values and interests. Efforts included a range of autonomous legislative measures (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, legislation on deforestation-free products, mandatory due diligence along EU global supply chains) through which the EU sought to project its normative power in shaping global regulation to a higher standard. In a more realistic twist, the EU's ambitions have been significantly lowered following the 2024 Draghi report, demonstrating a further shift towards interests, framed as competitiveness. The “simplification” of regulatory standards in a world where others do not observe them in the same manner is now perceived as the key to maintaining the EU’s standing as a global economic power.
Geopolitical competition has only exacerbated the EU’s turn towards using trade as a foreign policy tool to protect its economic security interests. The EU’s approach has been predominantly defensive and in response to discriminatory and unfair practices of third States so incompatibility with EU values should not be presumed, even when EU measures present different degrees of limitations on EU fundamental freedoms (e.g. FDI screening, the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, the Anti-Coercion Instrument). Critical raw materials show the trade-off more sharply: dependent on China for heavy rare earths, the EU has responded with the Critical Raw Materials Act and partnerships with resource-rich countries. This approach, albeit proactive, is still lagging behind competitors, as the EU cannot match them in terms of strategic prioritisation, speed or direct public investment. Ultimately, the EU may find itself with fewer viable options for diversifying its sources of critical raw materials and higher costs for developing sustainable supply chains that neither industry nor consumers may be willing to pay.
Migration: security vs. human rights?
Unlike trade, the EU’s scope to act is more limited in the field of migration, as the EU shares the competence with its Member States. At the same time, it is an area where the EU’s self-image as a normative power has been most challenged.
Member States are bound by the 1951 Geneva Convention, whose principle of non-refoulement is incorporated into EU law as the basis of the Common European Asylum System. They are equally bound by domestic expectations of tangible control over migration flows, and with far-right populism surging across Europe, reconciling the two has become one of the most contentious challenges the EU has faced.
The 2015 “crisis” catalysed the securitisation of migration, prioritising security measures over humanitarian norms. Mandatory relocation was rejected outright by Central European States and border control became the organising principle. Normative dissensus pushed the EU towards a transactional settlement: the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, adopted in April 2024 and effective from June 2026, lets Member States choose between relocating asylum seekers, paying into a “solidarity pool”, or offering alternative measures.
Its most contested element is externalisation, that is, outsourcing border control to third countries for financial and diplomatic incentives. Examples include the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement and arrangements with Libya, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Beyond offloading responsibility, these arrangements place asylum seekers in potentially unsafe conditions, since “safe third countries” as designated by the EU frequently present questionable human rights records and insufficient legal protections. They also create dependencies that can easily be weaponised, either for extorting more carrots from the EU (e.g. Turkey) or instrumentalising migrants in hybrid warfare (e.g. Belarus), or both (Ceuta). Yet for many Member States, prioritising security has been an existential response to pressures on social cohesion, political stability and the integrity of the Schengen Area.
Either-or future?
The world divided between great powers and driven by transactional self-interests presents great challenges for entities like the EU, founded on law, multilateralism and values. The future will thus require considerably more pragmatism and solidarity among the Member States in finding a coherent EU voice on foreign policy issues.
In trade, the shift has been from shaping the global order through regulatory and climate leadership towards sustainability as a means of competitiveness and a focus on security. It does not exclude values; it reflects the realities of a changing geopolitical environment with the EU approach still more reactive than proactive. A recent comprehensive EU partnership with Australia is a good example of how trade and security interests can be proactively integrated with values, in balancing sustainability and security in building integrated supply chains for critical raw materials, in supporting international rules through WTO+ provisions and progressive sustainable development commitments in a trade agreement, and in opening new avenues for maintaining the international law-based order in the Indo-Pacific through a security and defence partnership.
Migration is a more challenging dilemma, because the conflict runs between EU values and the interests of the Member States themselves, in a field where both competence and electoral pressure sit at the national level. Maintaining solidarity among Member States has emerged as one of the greatest challenges of the EU migration debate. The EU’s credibility as a normative actor depends on whether it can bridge that divide and demonstrate that security and human rights are compatible goals.
Ultimately, values and interests should not be seen as opposites: protecting key EU liberal values, leveraged through the EU's economic and diplomatic weight, is not only a strategic choice but an existential interest in an increasingly complex international environment.
Dr Ivana Damjanovic is an Associate Professor at the University of Canberra Law School and a Jean Monnet Research Fellow at the Australian National University Centre for European Studies. Her research focuses on public international law, EU external relations, international economic governance, and the intersection of EU trade, investment and foreign policy. She is the Project Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in Critical Minerals at the University of Canberra and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.
Dr Katarzyna Williams is a Deputy Director at the ANU Centre for European Studies at The Australian National University. Her research sits at the intersection of cultural history and international relations, with a focus on migration and displacement, and the politics of memory and identity. Her regional interests encompass European migration to Australia, Central and Eastern Europe, and EU external relations. She is the Project Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Leadership Emerging from Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Gender.
The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of EU-VALUES Network.