The European Union’s evolving vision for the International Order: from liberal Beacon to competitive pole

The EU’s vision of the international order strongly follows its own experience and self-perception as a regional peace project in Europe, which is founded on rules-based cooperation, economic integration and liberal values. During a moment of optimism in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the EU, considering itself a “normative power”, sought to turn its experience into a model for the international order. Based on the analysis of the 2016 EU Global Strategy, the 2022 Strategic Compass and key communications and conclusions of EU institutions, this chapter examines the substantive adaptation of the EU’s ordering vision in the ten year-period from 2014 to 2024 across three dimensions: distributional, institutional and normative. The analysis finds that the EU has had a rude awakening to a more competitive international arena that is less conducive to the Union’s values and interests. The EU’s vision of global order is now less determined by questions of global representation, formal arrangements and the spread of human rights and market-liberal principles, but aimed at an effective response to the challenges of geopolitical competition.