There has always been a multiplicity of voices within the context of European Union politics. Paradoxically, a single narrative is precisely what the European Union (EU) as a ‘peace project’ attempts to construct. Be it ‘civilian’, ‘normative’ or ‘soft’ power Europe or the EU’s most recent self-ascribed identity as a ‘force for good’, all categorisations share the more or less explicit premise of the EU being a different kind of actor in world politics. More recently, with the inception of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in 1999, the EU has again availed itself to the sui generis argument, yet extending it to the EU’s so-called “comprehensive approach” within ESDP. While civil-military coordination (CMCO) cannot be considered part of the EU’s constitutional structure, its prominence in the EU’s official discourse nonetheless suggests that it has developed into an organising principle of the EU’s comprehensive security approach. Yet, on what legitimate basis can the EU still claim its ‘distinctiveness’ if it is willing to use the ‘whole range of instruments’, including military force? These developments rather point to processes of normalising the EU’s international identity. How are these changed practices reconcilable with the EU’s grand narrative of a ‘peace project’, its alleged uniqueness? Literature associated with the recent ‘practice turn’ in IR theory directs us to view normalising practices and narratives of ‘difference’ not in binary terms, but rather in relations of mutual imbrication and constitution. Combined with a post-structuralist discourse analysis, a practice-oriented approach allows us to make sense of the struggle over the EU’s nature as ‘practice theory’ makes it possible to account for changes in a community’s collective identity. The paper thus argues that the way in which the EU acts, including discursive representations of the EU as articulated by individual foreign policy actors and their collective policy practices, provides tentative clues to the struggle over the EU’s nature.
