Framing the EU in a Time of Crisis: Media Reflections from EU Strategic Partners in Asia-Pacific

Abstract

In 2014, global competition for the role of’ superpower’ continues unabated. While the 20th century was widely held to be the ‘American century’, since the global financial crisis, the world has been characterized more by fractures than by hegemonic fixtures. The dust has not yet settled from this period of dramatic geopolitical shifting and ‘the emerging landscape is one in which power is diffusing and politics diversifying’ (Kupchan, 2012, p. 3). Some claim that there will be no single, dominant leader in the next phase of world politics: the 21st century, Kupchan claims, ‘will belong to no one’ (Kupchan, 2012, p. 3). Yet the struggle for global leadership continues. As the most regionally integrated body in world politics, the European Union (EU) has long sought to claim this mantle. Its Lisbon Treaty of 2009 was aimed at enhancing its global role, moving it closer to becoming a legitimate global political heavyweight — a counterbalance to its global economic might. Economics, however, have proved to be the EU’s Achilles’ heel. Since 2008 the EU has become embroiled in an ever-growing debt crisis, with member states’ economies collapsing and public outcry at austerity measures spreading. In this context it is pertinent to ask what impact the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis has had on worldwide perceptions of the EU’s leadership and its relevance globally. In the midst of the Eurozone crisis, is the EU seen by other global powers as an equal, or a ‘global pigmy, but local giant’?