International Monetary Fund (IMF) experts have called geo-economic fragmentation a risky reversal of the process of economic globalization carried out by leading global players. This article examines the instruments of the economic policy of the European Union (EU) in this context. The purpose of the study is to refute the idea formed in official EU documents about the emergency nature of European protectionism and to expand understanding of the rejection of the EU’s economic policy by its member states, despite its de jure approval.The analysis employs a retrospective method that provides a holistic view of supranational regulation, taking into account its past and present. The author uses the knowledge accumulated in Russian European studies, attributing the decisions of recent years to the manifestations of the deep protectionist essence of the EU. The article describes the recent political and legal acts of the European Union regulating its foreign economic relations and then examines documents on improvement within the EU's internal market designed to offset the protectionist drift of foreign economic policy.The collected expert assessments, including from special issues of journals that proposed topics for discussion, focus on the adverse consequences of the current course for the EU’s economy. These include distortion of competition, raw material starvation, the likelihood of a new debt crisis, and the preservation of territorial imbalances. Along the way, the author addresses the mechanism of financial transactions between the supranational level of government and the member states, describing it as an effective way to achieve approval of the EU's economic policy but ineffective against negative results during its implementation.The analysis of the documents, supported by references to the history of European integration, leads the author to the conclusion about the resistance of the member states to strengthening the unity of the European market and to other measures of supranational economic policy to reduce risks to the national economy. Thus, using modern material, the author confirms the conclusion previously obtained by researchers of European integration about the eternal struggle of opposites in the EU—the supranational level of power against the partisan protectionism of the member states.

This article was prepared with the support of a grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation for major scientific projects in priority areas of scientific and technological development No 075-15-2024-551 “Global and regional centres of power in the emerging world order”

This article was submitted on 20.07.2024