European Union’s actorness in international relations: From normative to normal actor?

The article examines the European Union?s role in international relations, a subject of academic debates in EU studies for decades. Numerous concepts have emerged to highlight the EU?s unique character as an international actor. Among these, one of the most influential and widely discussed is the concept of EU as a normative power which presents the EU as a specific sui generis actor whose influence lies in the diffusion of norms and cosmopolitan action. The aim of this paper is to examine the concept of normative power in the light of contemporary concepts that express skepticism about the normative character of the EU as an actor in international relations. In this sense, the paper focuses on the studies that develop the concept of the EU as a ?normal power?. While the concept of normal power is introduced in only a few studies without a clearly defined interpretation of this concept, these works emphasize the importance of the relationship between the EU?s material-strategic interests, instrumental calculations, and normative dimensions. Furthermore, they highlight new challenges that question the dominance of the normative power concept and the constructivist approach in EU studies. The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to contribute to the academic debate on the nature of the European Union as an actor in international relations and, second to draw attention to contemporary theoretical perspectives about the EU that are insufficiently understood in the domestic academic sphere.