The Geopolitisation of the European Union: Strategic Adaptation in a Shifting Global Order

This article examines the process of the European Union’s geopolitisation within the context of intensifying geopolitical competition and uncertainty in a shifting global order. It focuses on how this process reshapes the EU’s character as a political actor and identifies the structural constraints that limit its geopolitical agency. The study employs a conceptually oriented qualitative research design based on interpretative analysis and the triangulation of theoretical frameworks, policy documents, and selected empirical cases. The findings demonstrate that the EU’s geopolitical turn does not represent a transformation into a traditional state-centric power; rather, it constitutes a process of strategic adaptation within a complex multi-level governance system. Furthermore, geopolitisation manifests unevenly across policy domains, with the most pronounced impacts identified in enlargement, geoeconomics, and external border management. Despite rising ambitions, the EU’s capacity to act remains constrained by internal fragmentation, dependence on member states, and challenges regarding political legitimacy. The primary contribution of this article lies in its conceptualisation of EU geopolitisation as a hybrid and multidimensional process—one that is not a linear transformation towards a traditional geopolitical power, but an outcome of the interaction between regulatory, market, and strategic logics. These findings contribute to the ongoing academic debate by highlighting the necessity of theoretical pluralism when examining the EU in a geopolitical context.