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156 | Zsolt Nagy, Zoltán Simon, Viktor Szép, and Tamás Dezső Ziegler Some argue that the ideas of European strategic autonomy and sovereignty are vague partly by design, as they are meant to inspire, while deliberately leaving room for interpretation (Franke and Varma 2019, 10-11). Others see their ambiguity as allowing national governments - and citizens, we should add - to “project their hopes and fears” into these concepts (Tamma 2020). Indeed, it might be fair to claim that European strategic sovereignty is, in many ways, more a matter of imagination than of hard facts and reality today. The problem with this is that in times of political malaise, public imagination tends to move into pessimistic, reactive, defensive, isolationist, and protectionist, instead of optimistic, proactive, constructive, and cooperative directions, increasing the risks of internal and external tensions and conflicts. Vagueness also paves the way for confusion. A recent survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that core components of the concept of European strategic autonomy remain unclear and contentious across the Member States (Franke and Varma 2019, 4). This haziness reinforces existing fears, and even creates new ones, such as the concerns about weakening transatlantic ties — felt and voiced in Central and Eastern Europe in particular — or Young’s ‘strategic autonomy trap; for example. This, in turn, reminds us that EU strategic sovereignty requires strong internal (social) and external political legitimacy alike (Lippert et al. 2019, 14-15), with these two conditions being closely intertwined. Therefore, we may also agree with Fiott that the concept of strategic sovereignty is inherently linked to matters of political authority and to the relations between citizens, states, and institutions (Fiott 2021c). In the same spirit, we may share Grevis conclusion that the debate about strategic sovereignty is ultimately one about the EU’s political cohesion (Grevi 2019, 9), with a direct impact on its external status and behaviour. This chapter does not aim to deliver another comprehensive account of the idea of European strategic sovereignty. Its authors are fully conscious that the scope of this concept extends much beyond the realm of EU external policies — including, for instance, economic, energy, digital, industrial, agricultural, or public health issues (see e.g. Council of the EU 2021; Tocci 2021). However, our focus remains limited to the main theme ofthis book, as described in its Introduction, from three specific external policy perspectives — the viewpoints of the Union’s security and defence, international trade, and sanctions policies - as three distinctive angles of different nature in these debates.
