Soft Power and European Technocracy at the Time of Covid-19: Suggestions and Outlines for a Geopolitics of Expertise

The present chapter will try to analyze it in relation to the illiberal trends that now characterize different countries of the world and that, in Europe, have a\r\ndistinctive feature precisely in light of the violent criticisms against the technocratic elite of Brussels, which would operate illegitimately since free\r\nfrom any popular election. In many ways, this is a foregone conclusion\r\nbecause, in fact, the architecture of the European Union is the result of an\r\ninitiative promoted 'from above' which does not provide a close link\r\nbetween institutional activity and the consent of the citizens. The\r\nmanagement of the Covid-19 emergency represents an important\r\nopportunity to try to develop an effective response to be opposed precisely\r\nto the "illiberal" rhetoric on the illegitimacy of technocratic decisions,\r\ntransforming what is presented as a limit of European architecture into the\r\npivot of a counter-narrative capable of emphasizing and enhancing the role\r\nof competence within European policy-making, especially in view of what\r\nis increasingly emerging as a real geopolitics of expertise