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In recent years, the EU has increasingly applied state-interventionist practices to initiate and implement infrastructure policy projects. This stands in stark contrast to a phase of liberalization of infrastructure networks and services accompanying European integration and fiscal consolidation and infrastructure decay during the euro crisis. This article argues that the new state interventionism is strongly driven by the changing global constellation of a "new triad competition" where the EU is increasingly competing over infrastructures with the US and China. As a consequence, EU infrastructure policy undergoes a geoeconomic turn that aims to control transnational value chains and related political-economic spaces. Drawing on concepts of critical geography and international political economy, the article outlines the core features of this geoeconomic design logic of infrastructures and contrasts it with complementary or competing ones. The article substantiates these arguments by analyzing EU decision-making on two cases of high-tech infrastructure in the fields of communication and energy: the federated data infrastructure Gaia-X and the Hydrogen Strategy. Both cases provide evidence for the geoeconomic turn in EU infrastructure policy. Yet, the analysis also highlights that the turn is at times supported but also hampered by a capitalist logic that is reflected in the positioning of European and non-European businesses, as well as the EU's reliance on private action. Furthermore, it illustrates that an ecological and a social-integrative design logic to key infrastructures are largely subordinated. The conclusions reflect on the discrepancy between the EU's geoeconomic agenda and its less far-reaching implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current triad competition between the US, the EU, and China, globalization-relevant infrastructures serve both as the means and ends of conflicts. This paper asks how this historical constellation of geoeconomic competition has changed the infrastructure policy of its centers. Its political-economic perspective discusses infrastructures not just in terms of their strategic instrumentalization, but also of their role in global production and geoeconomic competition. It underlines how infrastructures serve as fixes that counteract internal crisis dynamics and allow for an expansion of productive activity. The paper undertakes an empirical comparison of the triad centers' central infrastructural measures and flagship projects. The results highlight a shared reorientation towards infrastructure policy that is driven by internal crisis dynamics and external competition over contested markets. Yet, it also reveals the varieties of infrastructural approaches as regards political objectives, modes of policy-making, and the role of national businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the emerging triad competition between the US, China and the EU, the control over infrastructures is increasingly contested. This paper asks how this conflict of connectivity influences the EU's infrastructure policy and what specific factors play a role when translating these global shifts into strategies. We develop a political-economic perspective that highlights the relevance of infrastructures for capitalist production and the pattern of dependencies between actors. Viewing the triad competition in infrastructural terms, we argue that the EU is in the process of becoming a geopolitically and geoeconomically oriented infrastructural policy actor. Two cases in the field of high-tech infrastructure are studied more deeply: the EU's development of the satellite navigation system Galileo and its strategy on 5G. They show that – despite the EU's geoeconomic approach – the particular mode of global competition in combination with internal political factors can hinder the translation of geoeconomic ambitions into specific policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the crisis, the Eurogroup underwent a significant expansion of competences in the field of loan provision, fiscal surveillance and structural reform. Still, to that day, it remains an informal institution, largely avoiding codification and public sanctioning. Against this background, this paper asks how the Eurogroup works internally and which value its informal character has for its modus operandi. For this, institutions are conceptualised as structures which distribute institutional power between members. Using data of expert interviews and official documents, the conflict over the Greek reform programme in 2015 is analysed. It shows that selective communication and immediate interaction, both particular qualities of informality, had a significant impact on the solutions produced within the group. The northern European countries were able to pull outcomes closer to their preferred austerity-political course by using these qualities to divert and focus external pressure and react adaptably to resistance. The findings indicate that, at least in the case of strong conflict, the consensus logic of informal environments such as the Eurogroup makes way for the use of institutional power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]