Building Strategic Autonomy in the European Union

European Strategic Autonomy is a key concept designed to strengthen the European Union’s (EU) international actorness and influence its policymaking practices. It offers a framework for guiding the EU’s initiatives in areas deemed strategically significant for Europe, outlining contexts, desired outcomes, and appropriate actions. This article seeks to contribute to the expanding body of research on strategic autonomy by examining the emerging aspect of this concept – namely, its practical implementation across policy areas. It addresses the research question: What concrete steps is the EU taking to build its strategic autonomy in practice? This article illustrates how the EU actively pursues strategic autonomy across various policy domains through a combination of four key actions: enhancing its capacity; mitigating vulnerabilities; fostering situational awareness; and cultivating partnerships. It provides an analysis of the EU’s strategic autonomy-building efforts, featuring concrete examples from eight distinct policy domains. The analysis is grounded in a qualitative content analysis of over 260 EU sources from 2013 to 2024.