Alister Miskimmon and Ben O'Loughlin will present new analysis this week at the UACES 46th annual conference being held at Queen Mary in London. In their paper, The EU's Struggle for a Strategic Narrative (on China), they identify the problems crisis-strewn Europe has projecting a coherent narrative through EU institutions. However, they argue that China's One Belt, One Road initiative offers the kind of hybrid governance organisation that European leaders understand. By finding alignments with China's new infrastructure programmes across the historic Silk Road territories of Eurasia, the EU may be able to articulate a world order not based simply on sovereign states, and attach itself to a constructive project for the future at a time when it seems mired in the present. Disagreements with China over the value of human rights and market forces mean the EU will need to temper its identity narrative of being a 'normative power' for others to emulate. However, this pragmatic turn has already been happening. It is time for the EU to turn to a 'building block' narrative in order to reconstruct itself and play its role in the construction of the new 21st Century multipolar order.

Time: 15:10 - 16:40, Tuesday 6 September 2016

Place: Queen's Building, Panel 615, Queen Mary, University of London (map)

Other presenters: Michèle Knodt, Ole Elgström, and Natalia Chaban.

This paper is part of a panel, EU Global Perceptions, featuring presentations from the Jean Monnet project C3EU: Crisis, Conflict and Critical Diplomacy.