The EU’s Strategic Autonomy and its connection to justice and security in sustainability transitions

In recent years, the European Union (EU) has instigated policies labelled under the umbrella of Open Strategy Autonomy (OSA) as a direct reaction to the globally increasing geopolitical tensions and uncertainties. OSA means the EU’s "capacity to act independently of other countries in strategically vital areas, including, for example, the economy, defence and energy" (Trippl et al. 2023, 1). In academic debates it has been also associated with a rediscovery of industrial policy, mission-oriented innovation policy and technology sovereignty. Technology sovereignty should be regarded as sovereignty of government action, i.e. "the ability to act independently in the face of institutional and economic boundary conditions and, in some cases, third parties' adversarial actions" (Edler et al. 2023, 2), rather than sovereignty over something. This paper aims to analyse the EU OSA policies in the context of transformative change required for solving grand societal challenges. We position our work in the field of sustainability transitions and create a sovereignty framework that takes into account two perspectives: just transitions and security. We explore the framework empirically in the energy sector (esp. the green electrification) and the healthcare industry. The examination of OSA in two contextual settings will help illustrate the different ways of interpreting justice and security, and the risks and opportunities OSA creates for the realization of just and secure sustainability transitions in Europe. The approach to security will draw from conceptualization of negative and positive security (Hoogensen Gjørv and Bilgic 2022). Negative security is oriented to protection against threats (Hoogensen Gjørv 2012) whereas positive security has emphasised emancipation (Booth 2007) and is closely connected to the conceptualisation of justice.