The Global South as ‘Europe’s Jungle’: A Postcolonial Critique of EU Foreign Policy in a Changing World Order

The global order has been changing, becoming less Europe-centred. In this context, the paper critically examines the coloniality of power embedded in European Union (EU) foreign policy narratives, with a focus on Josep Borrell’s 2022 ‘Garden and Jungle’ speech. The study situates its empirical analysis within the shifting geopolitical context post-2022. The EUropean discourse strives to restore its once hegemonic global power position, with growing popularity of the idea of ‘Make Europe Great Again!’ (Hungarian Presidency 2024) (echoing rhetoric similar to that of the German EU presidency earlier: ‘Gemeinsam. Europa wieder stark machen’ (Bundesregierung.de 2020)). In the face of geopolitical conflicts shaping European foreign policy, such as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Israeli military forces’ attack on Palestinians on the Gaza Strip, the underlying logic of Othering and Europe’s hardening understanding of its power have been unfolding (Oleart & Roch 2025: 2). The EU’s foreign policy narrative has moved away from the post-war project of a ‘peaceful’ and ‘soft-powered’ actor toward adopting the ‘language of power’ and embracing a ‘European sovereignty’. Therefore, I argue that at a time when the EU is losing its relative weight in global geopolitics, EUropean leaders tend to use colonial echoes strategically in political discourses signalling a dominant position over the Other and marking a clear border between the imagined Europe and the ‘Jungle’. Drawing on postcolonial theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study seeks to reveal how official EU foreign policy narratives reinforce asymmetrical power structures once cemented at the height of Western European colonialism towards non-European counterparts. I emphasise the continuity of the coloniality of power since the EU’s very conception, which is rooted in the loss of global dominance following the collapse of Western European colonial empires. From this historical perspective, I regard Borrell’s framing of EUrope – drawing on colonial tropes of moral and developmental superiority, especially in its relations with Latin America – as an attempt to preserve the global power position that Western Europe occupied during the era of colonial empires. The paper does not aim merely to point out the ‘immorality or inappropriateness’ of Borrell’s use of the Jungle rhetoric; rather, it argues that, beyond the linguistic expressions, there is an underlying colonial paradigm (Orbie et al. 2023). By empirically showing the enduring influence of colonial narratives in EU foreign policy, such as the implicit and explicit construction of the ‘Other’, this paper contributes to debates on ‘exclusion with access’. It exposes the coloniality of power that underpins current EU institutional foreign policy discourse and advocates for a postcolonial rethinking of EU external relations.