Protean power goes to Europe: on law, norms and power in the EU’s external policies

In line with the concept of protean power, the Special Issue highlights the European Union’s agility and capacity for innovation as key to understanding how the Union has successfully tackled the challenges arising in the present context of radical, global uncertainty. I suggest that while agility alone may be sufficient in the short term, sustaining EU foreign policy in the longer term may require that its innovations are of a kind that is acceptable to others. Such a suggestion would be in line with Katzenstein and Seybert’s argument that power is revealed and exhausted in the performance of bringing people together. Yet, taking into account the question of acceptability would require some adjustments to their approach. Firstly, it would entail reintroducing a notion of intentionality. Secondly, it would require an acknowledgement of norms as a common point of reference for actors’ ‘coming together’, that is, for the Union to generate collective power.