Pragmatic power Europe: Responding to an emerging multipolar world

Introduction: This paper presents a reconceptualisation of the European Union (EU) as that of pragmatic power Europe. It suggests that the emergence of a multipolar world presents a critical opportunity to re-frame our expectations and understandings of the EU as a power in the world. Enabling us to look at the EU through the lenses of both ‘what it is’ and, crucially, ‘what it can do’ relative to the position and preferences of others, pragmatic power Europe presents a broad based methodology for considering EU attitude, behaviour, the tactics it employs, and the power resources it utilises, in order to respond to the complexity, uncertainty and heterogeneity of preferences, and positions, at play in today’s multipolar world order