Being an international pushover with no teeth that folds like a deck chair to the demands of the rest of the world at negotiations, isn't "building the new free [trade] world,", or at least not one that benefits the EU. Absolute free trade isn't always a benefit for your own citizens and industries. Do you want to import low quality agriculture made by slave labor that will undercut your own farmers and put them out of business? Do you want to import unlimited people without assurance the government has enough housing, childcare and medical staff already in place for said new people? There's a reason borders and goods have some restrictions, because sudden heavy imbalances lead to destabilization of society and democracy.

The recent free trade agreements the EU has been desperately signing lately (mercosur, etc) are just short term gain for long term pain down the road, since everyone has the EU by the balls right now so other countries are squeezing as much as they can from the EU now while they're busy with Russia, expensive energy and losing China as an export market for their expensive cars.

EU capitulating to foreign trade pressures, is not gonna create a superpower like dreamers think, it's gonna create new dependencies with other (less democratic) countries, which is gonna backfire just like their dependency to US tech and Russian and China market did, in the future when those countries will have a strong grip over EU critical sectors, they will then demand concessions from the EU, and the EU will again fold like a deckchair because the EU is never in a position to bully others or retaliate to preserve its own interest let alone impose them around the world, further losing power internationally and remaining a pushover where its citizens lose, while the core issues plaguing the EU(demographics, debt, government speeding on welfare, lack of innovation and manufacturing in key sectors, no VC funding) will remain and continue to grow.

Signing deals to import more people and cheap food and stuff from Latam, India or wherever to depress wages and prices, doesn't fix any of that not make the EU a superpower, it just kicks the can down the road.