The EU’s evolving strategic priorities in the world order: normalising the resilience narrative

Abstract This article evaluates the way the dominance of a resilience narrative has shaped the evolution of the EU’s strategy in the world order. It employs the concept normalisation to explore how the resilience narrative displaced previously mainstream narratives at the centre of the EU’s strategy. We find that the normalisation of the resilience narrative justified altering two of the EU’s longstanding strategic priorities due to the growing uncertainty in the world order and the irreversible geopolitical transformations that occurred in the neighbourhood and globally. The new mainstream resilience narrative offered an opportunity to develop a more pragmatic and geopolitical actorness for the EU that has gradually displaced the rather normative and altruistic promotion of universal values, which underpinned earlier iterations of the EU’s strategy. Moreover, the focus on resilience was normalised through presenting it as an opportunity to enhance coordination, effectiveness and coherence in foreign policy.