The international environment is unravelling at a breathtaking pace, and geopolitical rivalry, including in the areas of technology, infrastructure development, trade, and sea power, is resurfacing with renewed strength. This should be reason enough to compel the EU to adjust and tune its internal mechanisms and calibrating instruments if it wants to improve its coherence and weight in the global arena. Eastern Europe is more than willing to play its part and its views and perspectives should be included and made an integral part of how the EU defines its notion of strategic sovereignty, mends and renews its relations with the transatlantic partner and engages with China, in order to make the most of its collective potential, by protecting its distinctive values and playing a stabilising role in an increasingly unstable world.