Pan‐Europe Revisited: Inter‐War Debates and the EU's Pursuit of Geopolitical Power
Journal: JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies
Year: 2025

ABSTRACT The European Union's (EU) transformation from a peace project to an assertive geopolitical actor reflects enduring tensions in integration theory dating back to the inter‐war period. This paper develops a comparative framework distinguishing territorial integration logic, which emphasises bounded political communities and collective defence, from cooperative integration logic, which prioritises issue‐specific, transnational problem‐solving. It traces the EU's strategic shift from the co