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Despite the growing interest in the (neo)colonial and gendered dimensions of the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy, the European Green Deal (EGD) has received relatively limited attention in this scholarship. We aim to contribute to this literature by advancing a postcolonial feminist reading on the EGD. By conducting a discourse analysis on documents (press releases, speeches, and statements) of the 2019–2024 European Commission, we argue that the EGD is underpinned by (neo)colonial and gendered logics. We identify three configurations of these intersecting logics embedded within the EGD. The first is based on the logic of ‘I lead, you follow,’ where the EU seeks to present itself as a neoliberal global model, setting standards for transforming environmental policies in the Global South. The second builds on the representation of the EU as ‘the man on the moon’, reminiscent of Cold War-era US leadership, relying on material or coercive tools to make others follow its lead. The third stems from a paternalistic logic, where the EU casts itself as the ‘protector of the globe’. We argue that these (neo)colonial and gendered logics obstruct the pursuit of radical solutions to the global climate crisis by reinforcing Eurocentric hierarchies and a neoliberal economic model.
Küçük et al. (Mon,) studied this question.