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 distinctive feature precisely in light of the violent criticisms against the technocratic elite of Brussels, which would operate illegitimately since free from any popular election. In many ways, this is a foregone conclusion because, in fact, the architecture of the European Union is the result of an initiative promoted 'from above' which does not provide a close link between institutional activity and the consent of the citizens. The management of the Covid-19 emergency represents an important opportunity to try to develop an effective response to be opposed precisely to the "illiberal" rhetoric on the illegitimacy of technocratic decisions, transforming what is presented as a limit of European architecture into the pivot of a counter-narrative capable of emphasizing and enhancing the role of competence within European policy-making, especially in view of what is increasingly emerging as a real geopolitics of expertise