Michaels, EvaSus, Monika2025-03-042025-03-042025Michaels E, Sus M. Strategic autonomy in security and defence as an impracticability? How the European Union’s rhetoric meets reality. In: Costa O, Soler i Lecha E, Vlaskamp MC, editors. EU foreign policy in a fragmenting international order. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan; c2025. p. 55-83. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-64060-5_3978-3-031-64059-9978-3-031-64062-9http://hdl.handle.net/10230/69804This chapter investigates debates on European Strategic Autonomy (ESA), viewing ESA as the main response of the European Union and its members to the fragmentation of the Liberal International Order in security and defence. By tracing the evolution of EU and national approaches to three main strands of the debates (defence industry, crisis management, and relations with global powers), we argue that the lack of an EU-wide permissive consensus about the direction and applicability of ESA rendered this impracticable. A handful of EU actors believed this could be an effective answer but the majority of member states were less keen to breathe life into the idea: whereas lip service to a vague concept was acceptable, committing to its implementation was not.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2025. This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Seguretat nacional -- Unió Europea, Països de laUnió Europea, Països de la -- Política militarUnió Europea, Països de la -- Defensainfo:eu-repo/semantics/bookParthttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64060-5_3info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess