Oldal 155 [155]
Global Europe and strategic sovereignty | 153
STRATEGIC AUTONOMY AND STRATEGIC SOVEREIGNTY
— Zoltan Simon —
The European political malaise discussed in the Introduction and across the
various chapters of this book is also present in the EU’s global relations and
external action, and in the public debates surrounding them. The Union
remains in quest of its single voice, strategic objectives, international profile,
and efficient external policy instruments in the global arena. This is not new.
Nevertheless, what were regrettable but tolerable shortcomings in a relatively
benign international environment in the past, have now become dangerous
deficiencies in a rapidly changing multipolar world of intensifying great
power rivalry. The concept of strategic sovereignty is closely related to all the
four above-mentioned challenges, while it is not identical to any of them.
New dynamics in the EU’s external and internal environment seem to
accelerate the emergence of a new foreign policy attitude, or even a new
foreign policy paradigm in the Union. As observed by Daniel Fiott,
strategic sovereignty is increasingly being held up as the ideal against which EU
international action should be measured. Perfection in economic and strategic
matters does not exist. It is, nonetheless, curious that an ill-defined and contested
concept such as strategic sovereignty is increasingly becoming the basis on which the
EUs political actions are promoted, questioned or even belittled. (Fiott 2021c, 12)
The Union's weakening power of attraction and self-confidence in the world
on the one hand, and its parallel ambitions to achieve strategic sovereignty
on the other, may be perceived as paradoxical developments contradicting
each other. In fact, they are strongly intertwined, with the second rooted
in the first as a response to a decades-long identity crisis of the EU on the
international scene. This identity crisis is becoming more pronounced in “an
increasingly hostile world that is largely uninterested in European values and
interests” (Fiott 2021c, 5).
The desire for European strategic sovereignty can be traced back to several
fear factors. One is the shaking world order, threatening the Union of becoming
irrelevant, at best, or a field of geopolitical competition (Franke and Varma
2019, 3), as a “playground for global powers” (EPRS 2020, I), at worst. Or, put
a different way, the “fear that the EU is being shaped by geopolitical forces
rather than shaping them” (Fiott 2021d, 38). This is mirrored in Ursula von
der Leyen’s ‘geopolitical Commission, or the repeated calls for the EU “to
learn to speak the language of power” by High Representative Josep Borrell
(see e.g. Borrell 2021, 13), who also portrays European strategic sovereignty
as an existential matter, a “process of political survival” for the Union in an
increasingly transactional world (Borrell 2020).