This chapter critically examines the 'geopolitical turn' in the European Union (EU)’s external actions and policies, challenging prevailing norms and approaches in EU studies by proposing a decolonial analytical framework. It delves into the EU's changing geopolitical stance which has seen an increase in the EU's adoption of terminologies such as 'strategic autonomy' and 'European sovereignty', reflecting a newfound assertiveness in international relations. We scrutinize this discourse for perpetuating neo-colonial undertones, particularly in how it frames the EU's relationship with other global actors. This chapter argues for a decolonising approach to studying EU external actions, calling for academic research that is not only politically conscious but also actively challenges entrenched power dynamics while amplifying marginalized voices. It introduces the concept of 'decoloniality' in a context of resistance against the co-optation of decolonial efforts into mainstream, institutional narratives which often dilute their transformative potential. Additionally, we emphasize the material dimension of decolonisation, arguing that a focus on symbolic and ideational aspects alone is insufficient. It calls for concrete measures to dismantle colonial legacies and institutions. This involves a critical re-examination of the European integration project, acknowledging its colonial roots and effects. The study concludes that a genuine decolonial approach requires a re-evaluation of the EU’s self-perception and its role in global affairs. It calls for a shift towards greater mutuality and less interventionist policies in international relations. These findings underscore the importance of integrating decolonial perspectives in EU studies, providing a foundation for future research in this field.

In my contribution I would like to intitiate an encounter between three issues: decolonial commons, pluriversalism, and the idea of Europe. My aim is to show how the decolonial commons could help us to think and build Europe beyond itself: beyond Eurocentric universalism. And by freeing Europe from its universalistic claims, it could revigorate the decolonization of the postcolonial world.

The commons are the anti-thesis of European universalism. The theorists of the commons describe their historical trajectories in terms of continuous enclosures. The colonization of forms of common rights, communal property and 'being-in-common' by forces of both empire and capital, leads to the formation of globalized, homogenous neoliberal order with its excessive commodification and privatization of social life. The commons were - and still are - seen by their opponents as barriers to 'the normal' path of development: anomalies, residues of the past, signs of backwardness, outdated institutions. They have been challenged with the calls for 'modernization', 'improvement', 'development', 'progress', 'emancipation', or 'adjustment'. Both the commoners of Europe - peasants, gleaners, nomads - and the commoners of colonized subjects - Indigenous people, fugitive slaves, pirates - were presented as living obstacles to the progress of European universalism. Thus, if European universalism was built on various forms of colonization of the commons, then their decolonization could be consider as the first act of moving beyond European universalism.

I argue that in order to conceptualize this overcoming of the limits of European universalism, we could refer to the novel concept of 'pluriversalism'. Seen as 'a world where many worlds fit', pluriversalism is an appropriate concept for thinking about the reclaiming of diverse and heterogeneous commons that have been marginalized or dismantled by Eurocentric universalist narratives.

Decolonial scholars have developed the notion of 'pluriversalism' to grasp social projects, experiments and struggles that are rising - from below - on the ruins, or in the shadows of European universalism. Their character is incompatible with the demands of 'the only possible world': to subjugation of social life to the forces of capital. Decolonial commons, understood as the reclaiming of communal life-worlds that have been marginalized and erased by the dominant order, belong to the realm of pluriversalist politics. As sites of alternative forms of value, possession, cooperation and governance, they serve as reservoirs of rejected practices that pave the way for the futures that are potentially non-possessive, post-Eurocentric and post-anthropocentric.

This paper examines the patriarchal and colonial dimensions of the myth of Europa and its use in philosophical, EU institutional, and aesthetic contexts, and offers some pledges for a feminist-decolonial reading and interpretation of ‘European’ symbols. The myth of Europa, which consists of the rapture of Europa by Zeus disguised as a bull, her rape, and the birth of three sons founding civilisations, is one of the most represented mythological scenes in Western Art, but it has also been the object of study of philosophers of Europe (Gasché 2009; Guénoun & Irizarry 2013) and has been heavily used by the EU as part of their symbolic policy-making (Challand & Botticci 2013). These philosophical discussions on the myth of Europa reveal Europe as a universalisable space, the space of politics par excellence. The central argument of the paper is that the depiction of Europe as transcendence and universalisability can only occur through the repression of the movement of rape. Bringing a feminist and decolonial attention to this movement simultaneously uncovers the patriarchal-colonial visions of politics that are sustained by a depiction of rape as irrelevant, desirable, or justified, but also puts forward alternative imaginaries of Europe carried by a depiction of Europa’s rape as a lived experience of suffering. The paper concludes by sketching three pledges for a feminist-decolonial political philosophy of Europe, one that brings attention to the material-bodily character of discourses on and about Europe, the need for intersectional feminist methodologies and visual-political transfers, and the responsibility to craft nonhegemonic images and imaginaries of Europe.

European studies have recently started to engage with postcolonial theory, to the point that Jan Orbie wondered in 2021 whether «a post-colonial turn» was imminent for European Development studies as well. This contribution joins Orbie’s call for the adoption of appropriate frameworks able to produce post-colonial analyses of European development policies, proposing a methodological approach for studying the history of European external relations.

Reconstructing the history of STABEX - the export revenue stabilisation scheme introduced in the first Lomé Convention and presented as a Communitarian response to Global South demands for a New International Economic Order - this paper suggests that this device was instead introduced to serve the neo-colonial objective to maintain a special relationship with former European colonies. This shows how engaging with European integration history from a post-colonial perspective can contribute to a new understating of integration.

This implies the use of different methodological criteria. I argue that Euro-African relations cannot be studied without Global South archives, which show how African countries received European narratives and how they shaped Euro-African relations. Historians engaging with these archives must be mindful of how Western and African concepts might differ. Moreover, European archives must be approached with a critical outlook that allows for the recognition of the strong role that member states played within the Community. Only by recognising that some member states were still empires in the 1950s and that they kept pursuing colonial aims within the Community, can historians write a post-colonial history of European Integration.

In the face of systemic injustices reproduced through issues like environmental crises, social movements in Europe increasingly recognize the disruptive and generative potential of most affected people and areas. However, relations with these people and areas are still largely dominated by continuing legacies of European conquest, such as neo-colonial economies invested in U.S. imperialism, Eurocentric worldviews, and racist politics along Du Bois’s "color line." Within the scope of contemporary European nations, there are many communities who are disproportionately impacted by these relations, too. My research engages with these impacts in the context of environmental movements, highlighting organizations made up of people from or in direct relation to these communities. I understand their efforts as “renegade brokerage” since they testify to intercommunal struggles that seek to resist and liberate, for example, with regard to essentializing notions of belonging, the ally-industrial complex, and prefigurative community organizing. Research participants come from a sample of more or less affiliated NGOs, grassroots organizations, and communities of most affected people based in Europe. Their specific type of activities is shaped by a systemic analysis concerned with, for example, decolonization, anti-racism, or Indigenous rights. A practice-oriented shift in the construction of history and futurity is critical to the activities of my research participants, like the rejuvenation of intergenerational struggles led by diaspora communities. This ongoing shift is also visible across European nation-states and corporations within the increased attention to largely performative apologies and reconciliatory efforts, for example, Germany’s 2021 apology for the colonial-era genocide in Namibia or the 2021 Swedish church’s apology for their role in oppressing Sámi. To test the navigational skills of humanist critical theories in addressing European environmental movements, I utilize Wynter’s (2015) triadic model of Indigenous-European-Black relationality. I thereby position my work alongside calls for a recognition politics grounded by intersectional differences rather than the assimilatory or integrationist forms of (neo)liberal humanism typical for Western politics (Combahee River Collective 1977; Lorde 1984; Harris 1993; Ferreira da Silva 2009; Coulthard 2014; King 2019). I contextualize interviews through a historical analysis of the relational overlaps with anti-colonial movements in modern Europe and insights from speculative fiction. In highlighting connections between Green Colonialism, Environmental Racism, and Eco-fascism, this project’s co-relational approach to knowledge production contributes to the existing body of literature on environmentalism, social movements, and contemporary legacies of European conquest.