The EU can't replace the US as a global player until it sheds its own colonial thinking | Shada Islam

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

76% : In many ways, Trump provides European policymakers with an opportunity.
74% : Amid geopolitical chaos, it is good news that there is an increase in public support for the EU and that many in the global south see the bloc as an important geopolitical actor.
63% : Yet the EU remains attached to global trade rules, has an economy that is posting modest growth and an attractive and vibrant single internal market.
59% : A vast network of trade and aid agreements connects the EU with more than 70 countries.
58% : I am confident that stronger EU engagement with the global south could help bring geopolitical stability to an unsettled world.
57% : The time is right for an upgrade in EU relations with the global south, but the old rules of engagement need an urgent overhaul.
53% : The EU, for instance, has clinched or is pursuing critical raw-material deals with resource-rich countries such as Rwanda, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
49% : As the South Africa-based academic Carlos Lopes, author of a recent book on EU-Africa relations, told me, the EU retains such a deep-rooted "colonial attitude of superiority that it translates into a sort of patronising charity and altruism".
47% : But what hope is there when EU governments, including France and Germany, are slashing their development budgets.
46% : But having reported on EU relations with the global south for most of my professional life, it is clear to me that EU policymakers must stop lecturing and start listening.
44% : In addition to protecting trade, the EU has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-evaluate its soft-power credentials, which are now tarnished by racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism and attacks on women's rights and the gay community.
43% : She has acknowledged that the "west as we knew it no longer exists", and so the EU must get used to a more complex global system.
39% : But only if European negotiators heed figures such as the former Indonesian president Joko Widodo when they stand up against perceived EU coercion and an assumption in Brussels that "my standards are better than yours".
32% : Since Trump dismantled USAid, European activists are also fighting to maintain EU funding for the world's most fragile nations.
29% : " The EU could also show more grit as Trump takes a sledgehammer to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

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