This article seeks to deconstruct the aspiration of key institutional players, that the Union perform in a more 'geopolitical' way, speaking 'the language of power'. The argument presented will be that in so doing the Union is contesting its own ontological realities, aspiring to a Westpahlian nature alien to its foundational, constitutional and political realities. Such efforts lead the Union to undervalue its strengths and to exacerbate its weaknesses. Such efforts set the Union up for failure and only widen the 'capabilities expectations gap' identified so early in the formation of the Union's foreign, security and defence policies. None of this suggests that the Union is inexorably condemned to be an ineffective or 'weak' international actor. It is simply that the Union is ill suited to play its role in traditional Westphalian terms and can instead embrace its differentiation, offering real added value to its constituent member states and making a unique and substantive contribution to international peace, security and liberty.

The EU is facing unprecedented challenges. The international distribution of power and authority is shifting. The norms and values supported and promoted by the EU are contested and challenged both inside and outside the Union. While Russia is waging war against Ukraine, European states can no longer take the support of their traditional ally, the US, for granted. The ambition to establish a strategically autonomous EU may be understood as a primary response to this unpredictable international context. Apparently representing a radical departure from the Union’s established stance on international politics, the notion has been applauded by some and criticised by others. It is however poorly understood and seems to mean different things to different people. In this paper I revisit the idea of strategic autonomy, aiming to understand how pursuing this objective might affect the Union as a polity. In so doing, I discuss three different ways in which we may understand the notion of ‘strategic autonomy’. While all three may be considered ‘relational’, each implies a different attitude to others and is also likely to have different implications for the EU as a polity. To assess the relevance of these three faces of ‘strategic autonomy’ I analyse public documents in which key EU actors outline and discuss their understanding of this notion.

This paper examines the transformation of the CSDP from as an externally-oriented crisis management policy to an inward-oriented security and defence policy, focused on the protection of the Union. Looking at the evolution of this policy from the early 2000s to current developments in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine allows us to trace this shift from external crisis management to internal security, symbolised by fewer but also less ambitious CSDP operations and missions. This can be explained both by the need to respond to a context of polycrisis, as well as the EU’s own experience of failure. This ‘defence turn’, which has affected other EU external policies including democracy promotion and resilience building, not only has transformed the nature of this policy, but it raises questions about its normative commitments. Despite the positive contribution the EU has made in areas of prevention, mediation and peacebuilding, current trends suggest that the EU and its member states have become increasingly inward-looking and interest-driven in its external engagements. Abandoning its commitment to external crisis management, however, the EU risks undermining not only its own identity as a security actor, but its interests as well.

This paper proposes a new conceptual framework for analyzing the European Union's (EU) trade and sustainable development policies. Existing theories, such as Normative Power Europe and Regulatory Power Europe, have largely shaped academic investigations into the EU’s efforts to leverage its market power to promote sustainable development, particularly through environmental and labour commitments under Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters in its PTAs. Analyses based on these approaches reveal that the EU’s TSD policy has been largely ineffective, yet their proposed remedies have arguably been symptomatic. They do not address the underlying problems of this ineffectiveness, which is the reluctance to treat TSD on par with the liberalization provisions and a lack of shared ownership of TSD chapters. To address these shortcomings, this paper introduces an alternative framework—Progressive Power Europe (PPE)—which draws on decentring and postcolonial scholarship to provide a novel perspective for evaluating the EU’s conduct on trade and sustainability matters.

The PPE framework proposes three key criteria for assessing the EU’s TSD policy: (1) during negotiations, whether the EU is open-minded and self-reflexive, mindful of its historical legacies; (2) in the implementation phase, whether the EU promotes mutuality and avoids creating a knowledge-based hierarchy (teacher-student); and (3) in dispute settlement, whether remedies focus on alleviating the challenges at hand rather than reinforcing an compliance-based dichotomy (enforcer-transgressor). Relying on elite interviews with trade partners and EU officials, policy documents and secondary literature, the study examines how the EU’s TSD policy performs under both the aforementioned conventional theories and the proposed PPE framework. It problematizes the EU’s heavy reliance on a template approach, along with its emphasis on continuity and consistency. Ultimately, this paper reflects on the guiding principles that should steer the EU’s trade and sustainable development agenda, arguing that a reconceptualization is essential to ensuring the legitimacy and effectiveness of this agenda against the backdrop a deteriorating global environment.

This paper examines the European Union’s (EU) evolving maritime security role, focusing on the shift from the anti-piracy mission Operation Atalanta to the naval warfare-focused Operation Aspides, formally launched on 19 February 2024. This transition, set against the backdrop of growing geopolitical instability in the Red Sea region, exemplifies broader challenges to the EU’s external action in an increasingly fragmented global order. Two central research questions have been formulated as follows: How have EU member states responded strategically and operationally to the crisis in the Red Sea? What does this reveal about the EU’s ability to adapt to new security paradigms?

The hypothesis posits that diverging national priorities, mainly shaped by historical, geopolitical, and military capabilities, have exposed underlying tensions within its collective security framework, while the EU as a whole has managed to maintain a cohesive response through Operation Aspides.

To explore this circumstance, the paper employs a qualitative methodology, analysing a diverse corpus of primary and secondary sources in fifteen languages, complemented by over forty elite interviews with policymakers, military personnel, and diplomats across all EU member states. The analysis adopts a comparative lens in the sense that it explores the different responses of Northern, Central, and Southern member states, as well as between large and small navies and neutral states to the Houthi aggressiveness in the Red Sea that eventually led the EU to launch Operation Aspides, after an initial stalemate.The research contributes to academic debates on EU foreign and security policy by integrating insights from the underexplored perspective of ‘small navies’ and their operational dilemmas. Policy implications include recommendations for enhancing coherence in EU maritime operations and addressing capability gaps to enable the Union to better defend its values and interests in an increasingly multipolar and conflict-prone world. By situating maritime security within the EU’s broader external action, this paper sheds light on the Union's capacity to navigate its evolving role in a destabilised international system.