Page 157 [157]
OCR
Global Europe and strategic sovereignty | 155 Subsequently, the idea of strategic autonomy has evolved into the concept of strategic sovereignty as a result of an obvious need to broaden its scope beyond the context of security and defence, and to discuss European autonomy in a number of other areas as well, from economy to energy and digital technology, and from public health to foreign policy. Nevertheless, this new formula seems to give the same hard time to politicians, practitioners, and academics. While some of them claim that “strategic sovereignty and strategic autonomy are different animals” (Fiott 2021a, 2), the arguments presented to distinguish the two are not always convincing. In the light of this sometimes confusing - and often unproductive terminology debate, we may fix three basic views as our platform for this chapter: first, that as a main rule we use the term ‘strategic sovereignty (when we go beyond the area of security and defence); second, that in today’s world the Union is facing a pressing need for the “ability to act autonomously, to rely on one’s own resources in key strategic areas and to cooperate with partners whenever needed” (Anghel 2020, 1); and third, that strategic sovereignty does not equal autarky. Finally, we consider the key questions highlighted by Fiott as the ones that still need to be answered: Strategic sovereignty FROM? Strategic sovereignty FOR? What are the main What does a political obstacles impeding independent political action and what dependencies are the political community seeking freedom from? community need strategic sovereignty for and what are the overarching political aims?
