{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.016265912305516265, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005657708628005658, 'mean_word_length': 5.490825688073395, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
GEOPOLITICAL DETERMINANTS
OF THE EUROPEAN UNION’S
FOREIGN TRADE STRATEGY
IN LIGHT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The Covid-19 pandemic has generated significant humanitarian, political, and economic
turmoil since its onset in early 2020. The crisis has since spread throughout the entire
world with an overwhelmingly negative impact. At the European Union level, both the
initial reaction and the uneven economic outcome across member states pointed to an
underlying lack of political and economic cohesion, as well as stark vulnerabilities in its
foreign trade network. Current research has explored these topics as well as on several
public statements by the European Union’s leadership revealing a potential shift in the
European Union’s geopolitical and geoeconomic outlook. The aim of the present paper is to
determine the fundamental principles that guide this shift. The present paper investigates
the European Union’s current situation, the climate in its immediate vicinity as well its
recent actions and trends and, using an intelligence analysis technique known as the
linchpin analysis, seeks to discover the core reasons that underlie the EU’s foreign trade
strategy. The main findings reveal that the European Union’s current climate and
insufficient attention directed to common geopolitical goals call for urgent actions, lest
centrifugal forces threaten to further undermine its growth and development.