The EU’s Turn to ‘Strategic Autonomy’: Leeway for Policy Action and Points of Conflict

• Published in: European journal of international law 2023-12, Vol.34 (4), p.973-1006
• Main Author: Steinbach, Armin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: International law; International trade; Technological innovations
• ISSN: 0938-5428; 1464-3596
• DOI: 10.1093/ejil/chad048

Abstract In a world marked by intensifying geopolitical rivalries, supply chain vulnerabilities and disruptive technological change, ensuring ‘strategic autonomy’ is now an avowed goal of numerous European Union (EU) policy initiatives. This article seeks to facilitate an assessment of this ‘policy turn’ by developing a taxonomy of associated objectives and by illuminating points of conformance and conflict with EU and international law. The EU Treaties offer a robust legal basis for a stronger-values orientation in external relations, for policies designed to rebalance reciprocity in pursuit of geo-economic ambition and for the pursuit of technological leadership within the EU Treaties’ level-playing-field legal foundation. Yet there is a thin line to collisions with international (trade and investment) law, notably where value prioritization, technological preferences or geopolitical concerns are tantamount to discrimination or invite protectionist policy choices. Employment of coercive tools in a unilateral fashion questions the legal default of multilateralism and openness. Persistent strategic diversity within the Union hinders ‘institutional autonomy’, particularly where unanimity voting makes intergovernmentalism the predominant mode of cooperation. The findings shed light on how the evolving geopolitical environment leads to a recalibration of EU external relations between protection and openness, independence and interdependence, unilateralism and multilateralism and power and rules.