Global Profile: Josep Borrell, The EU High Representative/Vice-President (2019–2024)
Cementing the EU's place as a regulatory empire.
For most Americans, the European Union is just a market with a flag. Smaller than the US and a little bigger than China. They see it as an inefficient bureaucracy that is too slow and cautious to change global politics.
The EU’s central problem is that while it can articulate its values, issue statements, and impose one-off sanctions, these are done as a reaction, not a policy. What it lacks is the permanent legal and financial structure to make these temporary fixes into a consistent and permanent policy that defines its operations and gives it real power to enforce them.
Before Borrell, and to a lesser extent now, consensus is fragile, often dissolving after each crisis. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea exposed this weakness: Europe condemned, hesitated, and improvised, but nothing endured. When Borrell became HR/VP in 2019, he inherited this problem. His message was blunt: Europe had to “learn to speak the language of power” to turn ad hoc unity into law, and fund it to make it permanent.
Before Borell, the EU was a Union with values but no teeth, commitments without enforceability.
Building An EU With Power
Borrell’s strategy was simple but radical in Brussels terms: when EU nations agreed on a course of action, he would make that into a permanent part of EU regulation.
Borrell’s approach was step-by-step: get consensus, turn it into law, fund it, and then enforce it. Where his predecessors gave speeches, he left behind structures that will outlast him.
Russia Sanctions Packages: by July 2025, the EU had adopted its 18th package of sanctions on Russia, showing sanctions were more than symbolic but part of a repeatable, rules-based system.
Global Gateway (€300bn) and Indo-Pacific Strategy: Europe’s answer to China’s Belt and Road. These agreements exported EU standards on sustainability, labor, and due diligence, rather than just funding or security guarantees.
EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime (2020): The Union’s “Magnitsky Act” created a EU-wide system for freezing assets and banning travel of human-rights abusers. It is now a permanent tool.
Strategic Compass (2022): A roadmap that moved EU security from words to action, setting clear missions, hard numbers, and deliverables: troops, systems, and budgets.
European Peace Facility (EPF) & EUMAM Ukraine: an off-budget fund that enabled the EU’s first Union-level military training mission. By mid-2025, nearly 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been trained with mandates extended to 2026.
Europe as a Rule-Maker in the 2030s
The test of Borrell’s tenure is whether these changes unite the EU in the long run. It looks like they will. The human-rights sanctions keep getting renewed automatically, without needing fresh debates. The Strategic Compass sets deadlines and concrete goals. The Peace Facility and training missions mean Europe is now providing soldiers and skills, not just writing checks. And Global Gateway deals are spreading European rules on the environment and labor into Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
For the United States, this model is disorienting. Washington projects power through its military and sanctions. Brussels projects it through (now) permanent rules, procedures, and financing. Borrell demonstrated that in EU culture, process is power. A singular action that starts as a consensus can become a lasting policy anchored in law with funding.
This is how Europe will become a global power in the 2030s. It won’t compete with US military power or Chinese manufacturing power, but it will set standards, economic and humanitarian, that others must meet if they want to trade in the EU’s $18 trillion market, the world’s second largest.
Cultural and Archetypal Profile
Borrell’s style fits the EU cultural perspective. He pushed countries to act together, but he never erased their flags. Sanctions, training missions, and big projects are run through Brussels, yet each government remains part of the process. Rules aren’t applied the same way everywhere; they were phased in, adjusted, or negotiated depending on the case.
His language showed the same mix. Official EU statements were stiff and legal, but he cut through with more direct but not necessarily blunt language. His big projects, the Strategic Compass and Global Gateway, were built to give Europe steady, long-term tools, not just quick wins.
In Hornby’s terms, Borrell is two things at once. A Bridge Builder, pulling 27 countries into one plan, and a Rule Imposer, making sure those plans became laws, sanctions, and funded missions. This combination made it possible for Borell to lock in decisions and create a united, consistent European power.
Why It Matters
Borrell has shown that the EU can be a global power. Each consensus, once codified, becomes a point of power. The US still treats Europe as indecisive. But Borrell proved that once Europeans agree, their decisions are harder to reverse than America’s political pendulum.
The stakes go beyond Brussels. In a world of multipolar competition, the EU offers a third model of power. A model based on rules enforced by rules and standards, different from America’s coercive sanctions, and China's big state-backed loans and infrastructure deals that make nations indebted to it. That is how a Union dismissed as bureaucratic will play a major role in shaping the new new world order in the 2030s.
What’s Next This Week
Friday — Core Brief: What Is EU Culture? What Is American Culture?
If the EU does become a global force, what cultural imprint will it have and how is it different from American culture?
Saturday — Prime Brief: Who writes the next global rules?
What does this all mean? Synthesis of the Future Brief, Borrell profile, and the Core Brief; maps the two dominant “rulebooks” (EU vs. China) and shows practical trade-offs for consumers, firms, and states.
Join us for more cultural perspective on TikTok and YouTube
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