The European Union beyond the liberal paradigm – the constitutive role of geopolitics in the EU’s identity as a global actor

The liberal paradigm explaining the European Union (EU)’s role as global actor has been associated with debates of the EU as a "civilian" and "normative power", and as a "liberal empire" among others. Such images were used by policymakers and opinion-makers to project the EU as a "benign" actor, a "force for good", whose foreign policies revolve around normativity in opposition to power politics, bringing to the forefront arguments on the "benevolent" liberal practices of interdependence, cooperation, democracy promotion and human rights, as opposed to geopolitics. However, events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine not only shed light on the limits of the liberal paradigm, but also fuelled demands for a geopolitical and realist turn in EU politics. This paper provides a critical reading of the productive role and co-constitution of liberal and geopolitical narratives about the EU’s global actorness. Building on the literature on foreign policy and identity-building, the article puts forward an assessment of the constitutive role ideational structures acquire in political projects, arguing that the narratives of a geopolitical Europe and a rebuff of the liberal paradigm currently in place, represent a significant turning point for the nature of the EU’s global actorness.