Abstract
As Manners illustrated two decades ago, the EU’s identity is constructed around shared norms and principles. These norms and the corresponding self-narratives have provided legitimacy, consistency, and unity of purpose among EU members, and have informed the EU's view of the world. The EU has found meaning in its global role as a norm entrepreneur, promoting, with civilian means, the spread of the liberal international order. However, contemporary global power politics have generated multiple challenges to the EU’s fundamental assumptions and narratives about itself, presenting a major ontological security crisis. The EU’s constitutive ideas and its self-perception as a civilian great power are widely contested not only by non-Western authoritarian powers (e.g., Russia and its military revisionism) but also within the Western normative community, by US President Trump’s policies. The paper will argue that while the EU strives to come to terms with the imperative to adjust its self-image and corresponding role to the new geopolitical realities, its enlargement can play a critical role in alleviating anxiety. It provides a space where the EU can maintain a sense of continuity of purpose as a normative power, and an area where its self-image as an influential geopolitical actor relying exclusively on civilian power can be preserved.
Panel: Geopolitical Power Europe: A Reality Check in Western Balkans and Eastern Neighbourhood