Just Territorial Resilience: Disentangling EU Policy Narratives between Geopolitical Stability and Spatial Justice

Abstract

Resilience has progressively evolved into a central principle of European Union (EU) policymaking, reflecting the EU’s response to multiple crises, from financial instability to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper analyses how resilience is framed across key EU strategic documents, including European Union Global Strategy (2016), European Green Deal (2019), Strategic Foresight Report (2020), Territorial Agenda 2030 (2020), Recovery and Resilience Facility (2021), and EU Cohesion Policy 2021–2027 (2021). Using inductive content analysis combined with a set of guiding questions, the paper identifies different framings of resilience, from a geopolitical stability narrative to a multidimensional governance paradigm. The results further reveal that, despite this evolution, resilience remains conceptually fragmented across EU policy, with territorial and place-based dimensions underrepresented and the uneven vulnerabilities of communities insufficiently acknowledged. The paper argues that embedding resilience in territorial logic is essential to ensure that policies address differentiated regional capacities and vulnerabilities, advancing both cohesion and spatial justice through redistributive financial mechanisms and participatory governance structures that give voice to the most vulnerable territories in the design and implementation of EU resilience strategies.