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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).
