The Geopolitical Transformation of the EU in the Era of Polycrisis: Hybrid Adaptation of a Compound Polity After 2022

Abstract

This article examines the geopolitical transformation of the European Union within the context of polycrisis and intensified strategic rivalry following the events of 2022. It addresses the question of whether the EU’s response to contemporary crises represents a mere temporary adjustment triggered by an emergency, or rather a more permanent reconfiguration of European integration. Methodologically, the paper employs a qualitative research design combining conceptual analysis, interdisciplinary theoretical synthesis, and document-based comparative process-tracing of selected post-2022 policy responses, including sanctions policy, energy governance, and geoeconomic industrial policy. The analysis demonstrates that the EU has not evolved into a coherent, sovereign geopolitical actor, but rather into a more strategically adaptive and selectively integrated compound polity. This transformation is characterised by differentiated institutional deepening, expanded executive coordination, and growing tensions between efficiency, legitimacy, and democratic accountability. The article contributes to debates on European integration by conceptualising its current trajectory as a hybrid adaptation to a fragmented global order.

1. Introduction

The contemporary global environment of polycrisis is fundamentally reshaping the trajectory of the European Union (EU), driving it towards new forms of strategic governance and societal adaptation following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 [1,2,3]. While earlier scholarly debates often characterised the Union primarily as a regulatory or normative actor, current developments suggest a more pronounced convergence of geopolitics, economic security, and societal resilience [4,5,6,7]. The war in Ukraine, coupled with intensifying strategic rivalry, economic fragmentation, and emerging security risks, has engendered a complex environment of polycrisis. This condition profoundly affects not only the Union’s external standing but also its internal governance models and the broader dynamics of European integration [8,9]. Consequently, contemporary discourse is shifting focus from the mere existence of crises towards an analysis of how these disruptions are reconfiguring the EU’s institutional development, political legitimacy, and geopolitical identity [10,11].

At the same time, these polycrises conditions are altering the interpretation of governance, political authority, and the EU’s societal role within the context of global transformational processes [12,13]. The geopolitisation of European policy does not merely represent a reaction to external security threats; it constitutes a broader process of societal and economic transformation. In this setting, issues of security, energy, industrial policy, and technological sovereignty increasingly intersect with debates on sustainable development and strategic autonomy [2,6]. Since 2022, the EU has adopted unprecedented measures across various policy domains—including sanctions policy, defence cooperation, enlargement strategy, and industrial policy—thereby accelerating long-term trends towards a more strategic conception of integration [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. These responses have simultaneously highlighted the tensions between supranational authority and member state sovereignty, sparking a debate on whether this geopolitical turn represents a coherent strategy or rather a reactive process shaped by crises within a fragmented multi-level polity [7,23,24,25].

The aim of this article is to analyse the transformation of the European Union after 2022 under conditions of polycrisis and rising geopolitical rivalry, focusing on the changing nature of its governance, integration dynamics, and patterns of legitimation. Although contemporary literature increasingly reflects on the EU’s geopolitisation, much of the existing research interprets these developments either as a return to intergovernmental governance or as a series of predominantly ad hoc crisis responses [10,11,23,24,25]. However, less systematic attention has been paid to how these processes interconnect across security, economic, and institutional dimensions, and what type of long-term political transformation they entail [12,13]. This article addresses this research gap by proposing an interpretative framework which posits that the current geopolitical turn does not lead to the transformation of the EU into a classical state-centric model. Instead, it fosters the formation of a hybrid geopolitical compound polity, which combines regulatory power, economic strategic thinking, and politically conditioned integration [23,24,25].

The primary research question is as follows: How does the global polycrisis environment after 2022 reshape the governance, legitimacy, and adaptive capacity of the EU as a multi-level system of governance? To address this question, the article formulates three analytical objectives. First, it examines how the EU’s structure as a compound polity responds to geopolitical pressures and security fragmentation [25]. Second, it analyses the extent to which the crisis events following 2022 function as mechanisms for institutional adaptation and the selective deepening of integration [10,26]. Third, it explores how the geopolitical turn manifests in the transformation of economic governance, strategic autonomy, and legitimacy tensions within the Union [2,6].

Based on this framework, the article formulates three research hypotheses:

H1. 

The post-2022 polycrisis environment does not push the EU towards a classical state-centric geopolitical model but rather reinforces the hybrid forms of governance characteristic of a compound polity [23,24,25].

H2. 

Crisis shocks—primarily the war in Ukraine—act as catalysts for selective institutional adaptation and differentiated integration, rather than serving as a linear mechanism for uniform deepening [10,26,27].

H3. 

The EU’s geopolitical turn manifests predominantly in the geoeconomic transformation of economic governance, which strengthens the Union’s strategic capacity while simultaneously deepening legitimacy and politicisation tensions between supranational coordination and national political control [2,6,28].

Theoretically, the article bridges neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, and postfunctionalism with more recent approaches focused on geopolitisation, polycrisis, and the “politics trap” [10,23,26,27,28]. Rather than describing them in parallel, they are utilised complementarily: neofunctionalism helps explain functional pressures and spillover effects; intergovernmentalism captures the persistent weight of member states and strategic bargaining; and postfunctionalism enables an analysis of rising politicisation, legitimacy conflicts, and societal cleavages [23,27,28]. The contribution of this article lies in integrating these approaches into a single analytical framework, allowing for an interpretation of the EU’s geopolitical transformation not as a one-dimensional shift, but as a hybrid and sectorally differentiated process of adaptation [13,29].

Methodologically, the article employs a qualitative research design based on theoretically informed comparative process-tracing of three selected areas of post-2022 EU development: sanctions policy against Russia, energy-security adaptation, and the geoeconomic transformation of industrial policy [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. This approach allows for the tracking of how specific crisis impulses, decision-making nodes, and institutional responses contribute to the broader transformation of European governance [24,30]. The aim of the analysis is not to test a single linear causality but to identify recurring mechanisms of adaptation that explain why the EU’s geopolitical transformation manifests in a hybrid, differentiated, and sectorally uneven manner.

The structure of the article is as follows: The subsequent section presents the analytical framework and methodological foundations of the research. Following chapters analyse the EU as a compound polity operating under conditions of polycrisis and geopolitisation, examine crisis integration and the institutional consequences of the war in Ukraine, and address the geopolitical turn in economic governance and industrial policy. The discussion then interprets the political and legitimacy implications of these processes, while the conclusion synthesises the main findings in relation to the future development of European integration.

2. Materials and Methods

This study employs a qualitative research design focused on the analysis of the European Union’s geopolitical transformation under conditions of polycrisis and escalating strategic rivalry. Given the complex nature of the phenomenon under investigation—which encompasses institutional, political, and socio-economic strategic dimensions—a theoretically informed, interpretative analytical approach has been adopted, based on conceptual synthesis and comparative qualitative analysis. The methodological framework bridges theories of European integration with approaches focused on geopolitisation, crisis management, and the transformation of economic governance, thereby enabling an analysis of the EU as a dynamic multi-level system of governance [24,30].

2.1. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of this article is based on the premise that the geopolitical transformation of the European Union following 2022 cannot be adequately explained through a single theoretical lens. The contemporary environment of polycrisis merges security shocks, economic fragmentation, energy vulnerability, and the increasing politicisation of European integration into a single, interconnected process. This process alters not only the Union’s political priorities but also its modes of exercising authority and the legitimisation of decision-making [9,10,28,31]. Consequently, this article bridges three primary theoretical traditions of European integration research—neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, and postfunctionalism—with the concepts of polycrisis, geopolitisation, and compound polity to create a coherent interpretative framework suitable for analysing post-2022 developments in the EU [23,27,28,30,32,33].

The first key concept is polycrisis, which the article conceptualises not as a mere sum of multiple crises, but as a situation in which security, economic, energy, and political shocks mutually reinforce one another, creating new mechanisms of systemic pressure on European governance [10,26,31]. In this sense, polycrisis is analytically significant because it alters decision-making conditions: it compels European institutions and member states to act with greater speed, under higher levels of uncertainty, and within an environment of heightened political sensitivity. The second key concept is geopolitisation, understood as a process in which domains traditionally regarded as technocratic or economic—such as trade policy, energy, industrial regulation, or the management of dependencies—become integral to the EU’s strategic and security considerations [2,5,6,23]. The third concept is the compound polity, which views the EU as a multi-level political structure with dispersed authority, overlapping sources of legitimacy, and asymmetrically distributed competences [25,33,34,35]. This concept allows for the analysis of the EU’s current transformation not as a linear progression towards statehood, but as the adaptation of a hybrid governance system.

Within this framework, neofunctionalism explains why crisis shocks often generate pressure for the expansion of coordination and competences at the European level. The functional interconnectedness of energy, sanctions policy, defence capacities, industrial policy, and economic security creates spillover effects that increase the demand for common solutions and institutional learning [27,32]. This perspective is particularly useful in explaining why the war in Ukraine and broader geopolitical upheavals did not remain confined to the sphere of foreign and security policy but instead impacted the core of the EU’s economic and regulatory governance. However, neofunctionalism alone is insufficient, as it tends to overestimate the linearity of integration dynamics and underestimate the political conflicts associated with the redistribution of authority.

Intergovernmentalism complements this picture by emphasising that, even under conditions of accelerated adaptation, member states remain the decisive actors in defining the scope and form of integration steps [33]. The geopolitical turn after 2022 should therefore not be understood as an automatic strengthening of the supranational level, but rather as a series of selective decisions in which member states support common solutions only where they deem them compatible with their strategic and domestic political interests [23,24]. Thus, the intergovernmentalist perspective helps explain why the EU’s current adaptation is markedly differentiated, asymmetric, and often dependent on ad hoc compromises. Its limitation, however, lies in its relative inability to fully capture the long-term consequences of crisis-driven integration and the shifting nature of political authority within the EU.

Postfunctionalism introduces a third, essential dimension to the analytical framework: politicisation [28,36]. It provides an explanation for why the EU’s geopolitical and geoeconomic decisions after 2022 have become subjects of intensified public and partisan conflict, and why integrationist responses increasingly encounter the limits of domestic legitimacy, identity, and voter acceptance. Military aid to Ukraine, the energy transition, sanctions, and debates over strategic autonomy can no longer be viewed as technocratic policies; rather, they are domains characterised by high political sensitivity and the potential for new cleavages [26,28,36]. Postfunctionalism is therefore critical for explaining why the EU’s geopolitical adaptation simultaneously strengthens strategic coordination and exacerbates legitimacy tensions.

To enhance analytical clarity, the article synthesises the primary theoretical approaches employed in interpreting the post-2022 transformation of the European Union. Table 1 does not present an exhaustive overview of the literature on European integration; rather, it summarises the key interpretative lenses that constitute the core of the analytical framework used in this study, drawing on established theoretical contributions in the field.

Table 1. Theoretical approaches to interpreting the geopolitical transformation of the EU.

Theoretical Approach	Core Assumption	Expectation Regarding Post-2022 EU Development	Limitations for This Article
Neofunctionalism	Crises and functional pressures can generate impulses for further integration and the expansion of collective capacities.	Security, energy, and economic shocks may lead to strengthened coordination and the expansion of the roles of European institutions.	Insufficiently captures the political conflicts, asymmetries, and legitimacy limits of geopolitical adaptation.
Intergovernmentalism	Key decisions remain under the control of member states and reflect their national strategic preferences.	Geopolitical issues will continue to be addressed primarily through intergovernmental negotiation and consensus, even after 2022.	Less effective at explaining the growing role of supranational coordination, executive capacity, and sector-specific adaptation.
Postfunctionalism	Integration is conditioned by politicisation, identity-based conflicts, and domestic legitimacy.	The EU’s geopolitical adaptation will encounter rising tensions between efficiency, democratic acceptance, and domestic political conflicts.	Less precise in capturing institutional reconfiguration and executive shifts during crisis situations.
Compound polity/hybrid governance perspective	The EU functions as a multi-level and hybrid political order, in which supranational coordination is intertwined with intergovernmental control.	Post-2022 development will lead to selective, differentiated, and hybrid adaptation rather than linear state-building or a return to pure intergovernmentalism.	Requires empirical refinement across sectors and time, as it does not constitute a singular “grand theory” of integration.

Source: Authors’ own elaboration based on [12,13,23,27,28,34,37].

It is precisely this combination of theoretical perspectives that allows for the conceptualisation of the EU’s post-2022 geopolitical transformation as a multidimensional process that cannot be reduced to either a linear deepening of integration or a simple return to intergovernmental dominance.

The combination of these three perspectives allows for the derivation of three analytical dimensions upon which the subsequent analysis is built. In this framework, functional pressures and politicisation are understood not as mutually exclusive dynamics, but as interacting forces shaping post-2022 EU adaptation: while functional pressures generate incentives for coordination and institutional adjustment, politicisation conditions the legitimacy, domestic contestation, and political limits of these responses.

The first dimension is the structural transformation of authority, addressing whether geopolitical shocks lead to a state-centric shift or rather to a hybrid reconfiguration of the compound polity. The second dimension is the mechanism of crisis-driven integration, examining whether crises lead to uniform deepening or rather to selective, sectorally differentiated adaptation. The third dimension is the legitimacy-political transformation, focusing on how the EU’s increasing geopolitical and geoeconomic strategic orientation translates into politicisation, democratic control, and new lines of conflict [10,23,26,28].

Based on this framework, the article does not operate on the assumption of a linear geopolitical “maturation” of the European Union. Instead, it posits that under conditions of polycrisis, the EU adapts as a hybrid geopolitical compound polity. This perspective enables a theoretical capture of current developments as a process in which the Union’s strategic capacities expand while the decisive weight of member states persists, alongside rising legitimacy and politicisation costs of integrative adaptation. This combination forms the analytical foundation for testing the hypotheses formulated in the introduction and for the subsequent qualitative analysis.

In the analytical section, these three analytical dimensions are operationalised by tracking specific decision-making sequences, institutional responses, and political consequences across three selected domains: sanctions policy, energy-security adaptation, and the geoeconomic transformation of industrial policy.

2.2. Data Sources and Research Material

The analysis is based on a combination of primary politico-institutional documents and secondary scholarly literature, utilised complementarily to reconstruct decision-making sequences, identify institutional shifts, and interpret the broader legitimacy and integration implications of the analysed processes. The primary material includes European Union strategic documents, official policy strategies, legislative initiatives, communication frameworks, and political statements relevant to the three observed research areas: sanctions policy against Russia, energy-security adaptation, and the geoeconomic transformation of economic governance after 2022, which are analysed in conjunction with the relevant academic literature [16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. This type of material is particularly appropriate as it allows for capturing how the EU formulates its strategic priorities, how it institutionally articulates new security and economic goals, and the manner in which it legitimises shifts in governance.

Secondary sources consist of peer-reviewed academic literature and analytical studies from the fields of European integration theory, international political economy, security studies, and polycrisis research. This literature serves two functions within the article. Firstly, it provides the theoretical grounding for the operationalisation of key concepts such as compound polity, geopolitisation, selective integration, strategic autonomy, and politicisation [23,24,25,26,27,28,30,31,32,33,34,36]. Secondly, it enables the interpretation of the analysed empirical cases within the broader context of contemporary debates on the EU’s crisis adaptation, its institutional development, and the transformation of economic governance [2,5,6,10,11].

The selection of research material is analytically targeted rather than statistically representative. The objective is not to compile an exhaustive catalogue of all EU policy responses since 2022, but to identify those documents, decisions, and literary sources that allow for the tracking of recurring mechanisms of systemic adaptation across multiple policy domains. This conceptualised selection of material simultaneously enables triangulation between official political articulation, institutional development, and the theoretical interpretation of the analysed changes, while also reinforcing terminological and conceptual precision in the construction of the article’s analytical categories [38].

2.3. Analytical Procedure

The analytical procedure of this article is based on theoretically informed comparative process-tracing, the objective of which is to track how polycrisis impulses after 2022 have been translated into specific institutional responses, policy decisions, and legitimacy consequences within the European Union. This approach is appropriate for research that aims not to measure the frequency of phenomena, but to reconstruct mechanisms of adaptation and identify how geopolitical and geoeconomic pressures manifest in the transformation of multi-level governance [24,30]. In this article, process-tracing is utilised not as a tool for testing a single, narrowly defined linear causality, but as a method for systematically monitoring the sequence: crisis impulse → policy response → institutional adaptation → broader implications for the nature of EU governance.

The empirical analysis is organised around three analytically selected domains, which represent three pivotal arenas of the EU’s post-2022 transformation: (1) sanctions policy against Russia, (2) energy-security adaptation, and (3) the geoeconomic transformation of industrial and economic-security policy [16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. The selection of these areas is based on the principle of theory-guided case selection, as each allows for the observation of a distinct yet interconnected dimension of the EU’s geopolitical adaptation. Sanctions policy captures the expansion of the EU’s strategic capacity in external action; energy-security adaptation demonstrates how security shocks translate into the internal reconfiguration of governance; and geoeconomic transformation enables an analysis of the nexus between strategic autonomy, industrial policy, and regulatory power.

The analysis itself proceeds in three sequential steps. In the first step, the crisis impulse and its immediate political significance are identified for each analysed domain—specifically, what type of systemic pressure necessitated an institutional or policy response. In the second step, specific decision-making sequences and institutional responses are tracked, focusing on which institutions and political coalitions played a decisive role, which instruments were mobilised, and the extent to which this involved supranational coordination, intergovernmental bargaining, or a hybrid combination of both. In the third step, the broader analytical implications of these responses are assessed—namely, whether the observed developments confirm a shift towards a hybrid compound polity, indicate selective and differentiated deepening of integration, or lead to an increase in legitimacy and politicisation tensions.

This structured analytical procedure also facilitates a direct link between the theoretical framework, hypotheses, and subsequent qualitative analysis. H1 is examined by tracking whether the analysed responses reinforce a state-centric decision-making model or rather hybrid and multi-level forms of governance. H2 is evaluated based on whether crisis impulses lead to uniform and linear deepening of integration, or instead to selective, asymmetric, and sectorally differentiated adaptation. H3 is analysed by investigating how the EU’s strategic and geoeconomic capacity expands concurrently with rising politicisation, legitimacy tensions, and conflicts between European coordination and national political control [23,24,25,26,27,28,30,31,32,33,34,36].

The aim of this procedure is not to establish a universally generalisable model of all aspects of the European Union’s current transformation, but to provide a mechanism-based explanation of how the character of European governance changes within analytically critical domains under conditions of polycrisis. This conceptualised analytical procedure further allows for a clearer distinction between theoretical claims, empirical observations, and interpretative conclusions, thereby enhancing the internal coherence and methodological transparency of the article.

2.4. Research Limitations

The presented research has several limitations arising from the chosen qualitative, theoretically informed, and mechanism-based research design. Firstly, the article focuses primarily on the institutional, political, and strategic levels of the EU’s geopolitical transformation; it does not systematically analyse its behavioural consequences at the level of public opinion, voting behaviour, or detailed operationalised quantitative indicators of political performance. Consequently, the aim of the article is not to provide a comprehensive explanation of all societal effects of the EU’s geopolitical turn, but rather to analytically capture the mechanisms through which this turn is reflected in the transformation of European governance.

Secondly, the selection of the analysed domains is analytical rather than representative in nature. Sanctions policy, energy-security adaptation, and the geoeconomic transformation of industrial policy were chosen because they represent the theoretically most significant arenas in which the mechanisms of the EU’s geopolitical adaptation have been concentrated since 2022. The findings of this article should therefore not be viewed as automatically generalisable to all sectors of European governance, but rather as an analytically grounded contribution to explaining a broader type of transformational dynamics.

Thirdly, the article analyses processes that remain historically open and developmentally incomplete. Given the ongoing war in Ukraine, the shifting global geoeconomic environment, and the continuously evolving strategies of the EU, it is likely that some of the identified trends will be further modified or deepened in the future. However, this limitation does not diminish the analytical relevance of the article; on the contrary, it underscores the importance of ongoing research focused on how the European Union adapts to long-term conditions of polycrisis, strategic rivalry, and increasing politicisation.

Despite these limitations, the chosen research design makes it possible to capture what is often overlooked in broader debates on the EU’s geopolitical transformation: the specific mechanisms through which the character of European governance is changing. In this sense, the article does not offer a definitive model of the EU’s development, but rather an analytically anchored and theoretically informed contribution to the ongoing discussion on the adaptation of the European Union under conditions of polycrisis.

3. Results

3.1. The EU as a “Compound Polity” in the Era of Polycrisis and Geopolitisation

The geopolitical transformation of the European Union after 2022 represents a pivotal test of whether the EU, under conditions of polycrisis, is moving towards a state-centric model of governance or maintaining its character as a hybrid compound polity. To address this question, the analysis focuses on identifying the specific mechanisms through which geopolitical pressures are translated into the reorganisation of authority, decision-making processes, and legitimacy patterns within the Union [2,6,23].

Crisis Impulse: The war in Ukraine, energy insecurity, and escalating geoeconomic rivalry after 2022 created simultaneous pressure to strengthen the EU’s strategic capacity in areas that were traditionally fragmented or dominated by member states. This pressure manifested primarily in the need for rapid coordination of sanctions regimes, the securing of energy supplies, and the response to global industrial and technological challenges [2,6].

Institutional Response: However, the EU’s response to these impulses did not take the form of a centralised transfer of competences; instead, it emerged as a mode of hybrid coordination. European institutions—most notably the European Commission—played a significant role in formulating strategies, designing policy instruments, and coordinating implementation. At the same time, key decisions, particularly in the spheres of sanctions and security, remained firmly anchored in intergovernmental negotiations and member state consensus [16,17,18,19,23,24]. This model highlights a combination of supranational initiative and intergovernmental control, which is characteristic of the functioning of a compound polity.

More specifically, this hybrid logic was demonstrated in the sanctions policy against Russia. While the formal adoption of sanctions packages remained dependent on member state consensus within the Council, the agenda-setting, legal operationalisation, and coordination capacities of the European Commission gained significantly greater importance after 2022. Thus, the sanctions regime did not emerge as a consequence of a simple return to intergovernmental governance, but as the result of layered institutional adaptation, in which the strategic political control of member states was intertwined with the growing role of supranational regulatory and implementation capacity [14,39,40,41]. It is precisely this type of arrangement that best illustrates that the EU’s geopolitical adaptation after 2022 does not transform the nature of the Union into a classical state-centric actor, but rather reconfigures its hybrid character.

Mechanism of Adaptation: The outcome of this dynamic is not a linear deepening of integration, but rather a reconfiguration of existing governance patterns. Geopolitical pressures generate a functional demand for coordination at the EU level, while simultaneously intensifying the political sensitivity of decisions at the national level. This dual effect leads to the development of hybrid solutions, in which supranational instruments are expanded without a full centralisation of authority. This is evident, for instance, in situations where the EU coordinates common policies, yet their implementation and political legitimacy remain firmly tethered to the member states.

Analytical Implication: These developments support the claim formulated in hypothesis H1, which posits that the polycrisis environment does not push the EU towards a classical state-centric model, but instead reinforces the hybrid forms of governance characteristic of a compound polity. The analysis suggests that the geopolitical turn leads to an expansion of the EU’s strategic capacities, while simultaneously preserving—and in some cases even strengthening—the role of member states as pivotal political actors.

Politicisation Effect: An integral part of this process is the increasing politicisation of geopolitical decisions. Domains such as sanctions policy, energy security, and strategic autonomy have become subjects of intense political contestation at both national and European levels, which exacerbates legitimacy tensions and complicates the attainment of consensus [26,28]. This aspect further indicates that the hybrid nature of governance is not merely an institutional characteristic, but also a source of new political conflicts.

Overall, the analysis of this domain demonstrates that the geopolitical transformation of the European Union takes the form of a hybrid reconfiguration of authority rather than its centralisation. Thus, under conditions of polycrisis, the EU does not develop into a classical model of a geopolitical state; instead, it adapts as a complex, multi-level political structure in which strategic coordination and national control are mutually constitutive.

3.2. Crisis-Driven Institutional Adaptation and Integration Dynamics

The war in Ukraine represents the most significant external shock to the European Union since the preceding series of systemic crises. It serves as a pivotal test of how the EU responds to a security threat with immediate political, economic, and institutional ramifications [14,15,16,17,18,19]. From an analytical perspective, this domain is crucial as it allows for an investigation into whether an external security shock leads to a linear deepening of integration or, rather, to a selective and differentiated form of crisis adaptation.

Crisis Impulse: The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fundamentally altered Europe’s security environment, creating pressure for an immediate EU response across several interconnected areas: sanctions policy, financial and military support for Ukraine, energy security, and the stabilisation of the internal market [16,17,18,19]. Unlike previous crises, this situation involved an external security threat that immediately spilled over into the Union’s internal functioning, significantly increasing the demand for collective strategic action.

The European Union’s energy response after 2022 further demonstrates that crisis-driven integration was neither linear nor homogeneous in character. Initiatives such as REPowerEU represented a marked strengthening of European coordination in supply diversification, investment redirection, and the reduction in strategic dependencies. However, their implementation remained heavily contingent upon divergent national energy mixes, fiscal capacities, and the domestic political preferences of member states [42,43,44,45]. This combination of a common strategic framework and asymmetric implementation illustrates that the EU’s geopolitical adaptation proceeds as a selective and sectorally differentiated process, rather than a uniform and linear deepening of integration.

Decision-Making Sequence: In its initial phase, the EU’s response was characterised by a relatively high degree of political mobilisation and rapid coordination [16,17,18,19]. Within a short timeframe, multiple sanctions packages were adopted, instruments for financial and material support to Ukraine were bolstered, and space was cleared for accelerated strategic decisions regarding energy security and the reduction in dependency on Russia [16,17,18,19]. This sequence indicates that the war functioned as a powerful integrational impulse, activating new forms of coordination and expanding the scope of the EU’s strategic action.

Mechanism of Adaptation: Crucially, however, this integrational impulse was neither uniform nor linear. The scope and pace of the measures adopted were significantly conditioned by the differing preferences of member states, their economic exposure to Russia, their energy dependencies, and domestic political constraints [24,28]. This implies that while the war stimulated new forms of European coordination, this coordination developed selectively—often through compromises, exemptions, incremental negotiations, and asymmetric implementation. Consequently, crisis-driven integration did not manifest as a unified movement towards deeper and more homogeneous integration, but rather as a differentiated adaptation across various sectors and member states.

Institutional Consequence: From this perspective, the war in Ukraine did not only bolster the EU’s capacity to act but also exposed the structural limits of its geopolitical agency. European institutions gained greater scope for coordination, strategic framing, and the implementation of selected measures; however, pivotal political decisions remained firmly tethered to intergovernmental negotiation and member state consensus [23,24]. Consequently, the result was not a transformation into a centralised security actor, but rather the reinforcement of a crisis-driven, sectorally differentiated, and politically contingent form of integration.

This selective adaptation logic manifested not only in relation to Ukraine and Russian energy dependency but also within the broader strategic space of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Rising concerns over energy security, supply diversification, and regional stability have increased the significance of the EU’s south-eastern neighbourhood, including the Cypriot maritime area, as part of the Union’s wider geopolitical and geoeconomic considerations. This development has translated primarily into an increased emphasis on the protection of energy routes and the strengthening of partnerships with energy producers outside the EU [46,47], as well as into debates on strategic autonomy and the Union’s security presence in the region stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf [48]. This did not entail the emergence of a unified and fully coherent geopolitical strategy, but rather an expansion of the EU’s strategic focus to additional vulnerable nodes within its external energy-security environment. Such developments further confirm that post-2022 adaptation proceeds selectively, in a spatially differentiated manner, and through a close nexus between energy security and geopolitical exposure.

Analytical Implication: These developments support hypothesis H2, which posits that crisis shocks—primarily the war in Ukraine—do not function as a linear mechanism for uniform deepening of integration, but rather as catalysts for selective institutional adaptation and differentiated integration. The qualitative reconstruction of this domain demonstrates that it is precisely the combination of high external pressure and persistent internal divergence that generates the type of integration dynamics characteristic of the contemporary EU.

Legitimacy Consequence: The war in Ukraine has simultaneously reinforced the politicisation and legitimacy dimensions of European governance. Decisions regarding sanctions, military aid, energy measures, and the costs of geopolitical adaptation have become subjects of intense domestic political conflict and public contestation [26,28]. This dimension is significant because it illustrates that crisis-driven integration is not merely a matter of functional efficiency, but also one of political acceptance and democratic sustainability.

Overall, this area demonstrates that the war in Ukraine accelerated the EU’s geopolitical transformation, yet it did not do so through a unified or centralising integrational leap. On the contrary, it acted as an accelerator for selective, asymmetric, and legitimacy-intensive adaptation, which remains the defining feature of the European Union’s current trajectory.

3.3. Geo-Economic Transformation and Strategic Autonomy

Geopolitical shifts post-2022 have significantly accelerated the transformation of the European Union’s economic governance towards a more strategic and security-oriented model [20,49]. The traditional understanding of the Single Market and trade policy as primarily economic instruments is gradually evolving into a comprehensive geo-economic strategy that intertwines security, technological sovereignty, and industrial policy [5,6]. This shift is closely linked to intensifying great-power rivalry, the fragmentation of global supply chains, and the EU’s efforts to reduce strategic dependencies in energy, critical raw materials, and digital technologies [19,20].

One of the most salient manifestations of this transformation is the strengthening of the concept of ‘strategic autonomy’, which is progressively moving from the sphere of security policy into the broader framework of economic and technological governance [20]. Strategic autonomy is no longer conceived as an isolationist project, but rather as the Union’s capacity to act independently when its political or economic interests are threatened [21].

The geo-economic turn also highlights the growing role of industrial policy and in-vestment instruments within the process of European integration [49,50]. Initiatives aimed at supporting green and digital technologies, protecting critical supply chains, and fostering strategic sectors indicate a shift towards a more proactive model of economic management [21,22]. This development can be interpreted both as a response to global competition and as an endeavour to ensure the long-term societal resilience and sustainable development of the European economy.

Nevertheless, the EU’s geo-economic transformation remains markedly influenced by internal disparities between member states [50]. Divergences in economic performance, energy structures, and industrial capacities lead to differing preferences regarding strategic autonomy and industrial policy. Some states view the strengthening of European economic sovereignty as an opportunity to deepen integration, while others emphasise the need to maintain the flexibility of national policies [51]. This misalignment creates a tension between the pursuit of collective strategicism and the persistent logic of intergovernmental bargaining.

Furthermore, the geo-economic turn is altering the legitimising foundations of Euro-pean integration. While the strengthening of regulatory and investment instruments may enhance the efficacy of responses to global challenges, it simultaneously raises questions regarding democratic oversight and the transparency of decision-making processes. The increasing politicisation of economic policies suggests that integration is shifting from a technocratic plane into the sphere of public political contestation, which may affect the future stability of the integration project [49,50].

From an analytical perspective, the EU’s geo-economic transformation does not rep-resent a radical departure from its original identity, but rather its adaptation to new geo-political conditions. The Union is gradually expanding the spectrum of instruments through which it links economic policy, security interests, and societal resilience. This process reinforces the EU’s character as a hybrid geopolitical compound polity, responding to systemic pressures through a combination of regulatory power, strategic investment, and politically conditioned integration.

4. Discussion

The presented analysis demonstrates that the geopolitical transformation of the European Union after 2022 does not represent a linear shift towards a classical state-centric model, but rather a process of hybrid, sectorally differentiated, and legitimacy-intensive adaptation. At a theoretical level, this implies that the geopolitisation of the EU cannot be adequately interpreted either as a simple return to intergovernmentalism or as a homogeneous deepening of supranational integration; instead, it constitutes a reconfiguration of authority, coordination, and legitimacy within a compound polity [23,24,25,26,27,28,30,31,32,33,34,36].

The first significant finding is that the EU’s geopolitical adaptation is reconfigurational rather than convergent in nature. The analysis presented here has shown that the war in Ukraine, energy insecurity, and geoeconomic pressures did not lead to the replacement of the existing model of European governance with a new centralised order. Rather, they resulted in the restructuring of existing relationships between supranational coordination and national political control. This reconfiguration, however, unfolds on top of pre-existing institutional asymmetries and areas of structural incompleteness within the EU, particularly in the domain of Economic and Monetary Union, which may constrain the long-term coherence of geopolitical and geoeconomic action. Theoretically, this finding is significant because it contests those interpretations of current EU developments that view geopolitisation primarily as a return to statehood or as a straightforward reinforcement of intergovernmentalism [23,24,33]. Instead, the findings of this article suggest that the EU’s geopolitical adaptation proceeds through the hybridisation of authority rather than its unification.

Furthermore, the findings of this article enter into dialogue with a second influential interpretation, which posits that the post-2022 geopolitical turn of the EU represents a largely temporary and exceptional crisis response lacking deeper institutional durability. The presented analysis suggests that while this view captures an important facet of reality, it fails to explain why the changes following 2022 are not limited to one-off crisis improvisations, but manifest in a persistent reconfiguration of decision-making patterns, strategic capacities, and sectoral priorities [7,10,31]. It is in this sense that the concept of a hybrid geopolitical compound polity allows for the capturing not only of who decides in times of crisis but also how the relationships between authority, coordination, and legitimacy within the EU are being restructured over the longer term under geopolitical pressure.

The second important finding is that while the crisis shocks after 2022 do stimulate integration, they do so selectively, asymmetrically, and in a sectorally differentiated manner. In this regard, the results support a modified neofunctionalist reading of contemporary integration: functional pressures and spillover mechanisms remain relevant, but their effect is politically filtered and institutionally conditioned [27,32]. Crisis, therefore, does not automatically lead to a linear deepening of integration; instead, it leads to a situation where integration develops where there is a combination of high functional pressure, political acceptability, and strategic necessity. This conclusion also helps to better explain why the EU behaves with surprising agency in certain areas after 2022, while remaining constrained or fragmented in others.

The third key finding is that the geoeconomic transformation of economic governance represents one of the most significant, yet theoretically under-examined, dimensions of the EU’s current development. The results indicate that the geopolitical turn is not confined solely to the spheres of foreign or security policy; it is increasingly reshaping economic governance, industrial policy, the regulation of dependencies, and the conceptualisation of strategic autonomy [2,5,6]. This shift holds broader significance for the study of European integration, as it suggests that the future dynamics of the EU are likely to be formed at the intersection of security and economic imperatives, rather than through traditional integrationist conflicts alone.

At the same time, however, the results demonstrate that the EU’s growing strategic capacity is accompanied by rising legitimacy and politicisation costs. Decisions regarding sanctions, the energy transition, industrial interventions, or strategic dependencies can no longer be viewed as predominantly technocratic or administrative. On the contrary, they are increasingly becoming part of domestic political conflict, partisan competition, and disputes over the distribution of the costs and benefits of geopolitical adaptation [26,28,36]. This aspect confirms the relevance of the postfunctionalist perspective and suggests that the EU’s future resilience will depend not only on its institutional capacity to act but also on its ability to legitimise strategic decisions under conditions of increasing political fragmentation. In this sense, the EU’s geopolitical transformation also carries a broader normative dimension, raising questions of political purpose, democratic direction, and the value coherence of strategic action. Although these issues are not the primary focus of the present analysis, they form an important background to understanding the political significance of the Union’s current adaptive trajectory.

Building on these arguments, the analysis challenges two oversimplified interpretations of the European Union’s current trajectory. The first is the notion that the war in Ukraine and broader geopolitical rivalry have automatically “unified” Europe and paved the way for a new phase of centralised integration. The second is the counter-argument that geopolitisation represents nothing more than a return to the dominance of member states. The analysis presented here suggests that neither of these interpretations is sufficient. Current EU developments are better understood as a hybrid and contingent process in which the expansion of strategic agency occurs concurrently with persistent fragmentation of authority and growing legitimacy vulnerability.

The theoretical contribution of this article lies in its integration of neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, and postfunctionalism into a single analytical framework that allows for the interpretation of the EU’s geopolitical transformation as a multidimensional process. Rather than conceiving of the EU either as an “unfinished state” or as a purely intergovernmental arena, this article demonstrates that its current adaptation is best captured as the evolution of a hybrid geopolitical compound polity, in which strategic coordination, political differentiation, and legitimacy tensions are mutually constitutive [25,33,34].

These findings have implications for further research. They suggest that future studies of the EU’s geopolitical transformation should focus more closely on the nexus between the security and economic dimensions of integration, on sectoral differences in adaptive capacity, and on the mechanisms through which strategic decisions become subjects of political contestation. These areas will likely be decisive in understanding whether the European Union can maintain its strategic agency without simultaneously deepening its legitimacy fragility.

5. Conclusions

This article has analysed the geopolitical transformation of the European Union after 2022 within the context of polycrisis, the war in Ukraine, and escalating geoeconomic rivalry. Its objective was to explain how these interconnected pressures are reshaping the character of European governance, the EU’s adaptive capacity, and its patterns of legitimation. By bridging theories of European integration with the concepts of polycrisis, geopolitisation, and the compound polity, the article has demonstrated that current developments in the EU cannot be adequately understood either as a linear shift towards statehood or as a simple return to the dominance of member states. Instead, they can be more persuasively interpreted as a process of hybrid geopolitical adaptation of the European Union as a compound polity.

The qualitative analysis supported the three primary claims of the article. Firstly, geopolitical and security pressures after 2022 do not reinforce a classical state-centric model of European governance; rather, they lead to a reconfiguration of the relationships between supranational coordination and national political control. Secondly, crisis shocks—most notably the war in Ukraine—act as catalysts for selective and differentiated institutional adaptation, rather than serving as mechanisms for uniform and linear deepening of integration. Thirdly, the geopolitical turn is significantly manifested in the transformation of economic governance, where the EU expands its strategic and geoeconomic capacity while simultaneously facing increasing tensions between efficiency, legitimacy, and the political acceptability of the decisions adopted.

The primary theoretical contribution of this article lies in its integration of neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, and postfunctionalism into a unified interpretative framework, allowing for a more precise capture of the EU’s current development as a multidimensional process of adaptive reconfiguration. Thus, the article contributes to the contemporary debate on the geopolitisation of the European Union by demonstrating that the EU’s geopolitical agency cannot be reduced solely to the sphere of security or foreign policy coordination. It represents a broader transformational process impacting economic governance, industrial policy, legitimacy structures, and the Union’s internal political cohesion.

Furthermore, the findings suggest that the EU’s growing strategic capacity does not automatically translate into increased political resilience or legitimacy stability. On the contrary, geopolitical adaptation may deepen internal asymmetries, distribute costs unevenly, and create new cleavages between efficiency, solidarity, and democratic control. The future development of the European Union will therefore depend not only on its ability to act strategically but also on whether it can sustain this strategic transformation politically and socially.

The article also opens avenues for further research, particularly regarding the comparison of sectoral differences in the EU’s geopolitical adaptation, the role of domestic political conflict in shaping strategic decisions, and the long-term consequences of the geoeconomic turn for the future of the Single Market and European democracy. Ultimately, the post-2022 transformation of the European Union is best understood neither as a return to a purely state-centric model nor as a linear deepening of supranational integration, but as a differentiated process of hybrid geopolitical adaptation of a compound polity under conditions of polycrisis.