ABSTRACT
This study analyses the European Union’s position in the international system through the lens of ontological security theory, with particular attention to how the Union constructs and sustains identity stability through routines and biographical continuity, as well as through its internal biography and relations with external actors. The central argument of the study is that recent developments such as Brexit, the migration crisis, debates over strategic autonomy, and the war in Ukraine constitute not only institutional and political challenges but also profound ontological threats to the identity narrative historically constructed by the EU. In this context, the tension between the EU’s self-positioning as a “normative power” and its increasingly assertive identity as a “strategic actor” generates vulnerabilities in the Union’s capacity to preserve its biographical continuity. The article draws on the contributions of Anthony Giddens, Jennifer Mitzen, and Brent J. Steele to the ontological security literature as its theoretical foundation and employs a qualitative, interpretive discourse analysis of official documents, political discourses, and policy texts that reflect the EU’s identity and foreign policy orientations. By integrating the internal and external dimensions of ontological security, this approach elucidates the interaction between the EU’s internal identity construction and its external strategic behavior, and offers an original contribution to the literature by conceptualizing the Union’s evolving role in global politics from an existential security perspective.