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When, in November 2019, the newly appointed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that her commission would be “a geopolitical one,” this was met with a mix of hope and skepticism in Europe and beyond. Hope by those who believe that a strong Europe is indispensable for a stable democratic world; skepticism by those who considered the EU as too opportunistic or dysfunctional to think and behave as a proactive geopolitical power. 

Exactly four years on, in a speech at the European Defense Agency, she said: “Our Union was born as a peace project. But peace requires security. We must think again of our Union as a security project.” What to most of the world would be self-evident, in the European Union is felt as a major trajectory. If von der Leyen used the phrase “security union” in 2019, few in Europe would have even understood the concept, firmly believing that the EU was already a normative global leader, a salient s