Europe Needs Its Former Colonies Again

Europe talks increasingly about partnership with South America. But partnerships become complicated when one side still defines what seriousness is supposed to sound like.

A friend recently told me about a Brazilian delegation visiting an EU country during a series of institutional meetings connected to the growing relationship between Europe and South America. She had spent days preparing them beforehand, not so much for the content itself, but for the language surrounding it. She wanted them to frame their arguments through concepts European institutions immediately recognize as credible: sustainability, democratic values, strategic cooperation, institutional alignment. The familiar vocabulary of seriousness.

The meetings began, and the delegation chose a different approach.

Instead of presenting Brazil primarily through policy language, they spoke about identity. About culture, warmth, regional differences, music, contradiction and national pride. They spoke about Brazil as Brazilians tend to experience it themselves, rather than as something translated into a European institutional framework.

My friend was frustrated afterwards. Not because they lacked competence. Quite the opposite. She felt they had weakened their own position strategically by refusing to adapt more carefully to the room they were in. I understood her point immediately. International diplomacy has its own codes, and anyone who has worked around institutions knows that credibility is often decided long before the actual argument begins.

Still, something about the story stayed with me.

The timing matters. Europe is suddenly looking outward again with a different intensity than before. The relationship with the United States feels less stable. China has become both economically necessary and politically unsettling. Supply chains, energy dependencies and geopolitical uncertainty have pushed Europe into a more pragmatic search for partnerships. South America has reappeared in that landscape with renewed importance.

You can feel it in the tone. Trade agreements move faster. Diplomatic language becomes warmer. Strategic partnerships are rediscovered.

And somewhere underneath all this sits a question that Europe rarely asks openly: what happens when the regions once treated mainly as peripheral suppliers or development concerns return as politically necessary partners?

I do not mean this as a simple colonial analogy. History is more complicated than that, and contemporary Europe is obviously not trying to recreate formal empire. Still, historical structures leave behind habits of perception. One of them may be the assumption that Europe continues to define the emotional and intellectual style of legitimacy in international spaces.

Michel Foucault wrote about how power functions through dominant discourses: systems that shape what societies experience as rational, normal and credible. Power is often most effective when it no longer looks like power at all, but simply like common sense. His idea of biopower pushed this even further. Modern societies do not only control through laws or punishment, but through norms people gradually internalize themselves. Individuals learn how respectable people behave, speak and present themselves.

I sometimes think European institutions operate in a similar way internationally. Not because European values are necessarily wrong or dishonest, but because Europe increasingly mistakes its own cultural style for neutrality itself.

Professionalism begins to sound culturally specific while pretending not to be.

Restraint becomes rationality. Technocratic language becomes seriousness. Emotional distance becomes maturity. Countries entering these environments quickly understand which versions of themselves travel well inside the system and which parts lower their credibility.

That is what made the Brazilian delegation interesting to me. They did not reject diplomacy or refuse cooperation. They simply seemed unwilling to reduce themselves completely into a form already approved by European expectations. The discomfort this created in the room was subtle, but recognizable.

Europe is generally comfortable with diversity when it arrives as aesthetics. Food, music, festivals and symbolic multiculturalism are easy to celebrate. What becomes harder is diversity that alters the emotional structure of professionalism itself. Diversity that does not fully adapt before entering the room.

Perhaps that is why the situation felt larger than a disagreement about communication strategy. It touched something deeper about the current geopolitical moment. Europe needs allies again, perhaps more urgently than it has in decades. But partnership becomes complicated when one side still unconsciously defines the terms of seriousness for everyone else.

I keep returning to something my friend never actually said directly, but which sat underneath her frustration. She wanted the delegation to succeed. She understood the institutional codes and was trying to help them navigate power effectively. That is what makes these situations difficult to judge too simplistically. Power rarely reproduces itself through obvious domination anymore. More often through practical advice, soft calibration and small adjustments presented as professionalism.

Maybe modern power is less about forcing people to become European.

Maybe it is about teaching them which parts of themselves should remain outside the meeting room.