This paper investigates the ideational leadership of EU institutions, conceptualising it as the capacity of institutional actors to steer EU policymaking through ideas about principles, programmes, and instruments. These ideas operate at three levels of generality, leading to three distinct types of ideational leadership: normative leadership, which defines the EU’s values and principles; political leadership, which articulates EU priorities and action programmes; and technical leadership, which influences the development and implementation of EU policy tools.

The study examines two case studies of EU foreign policy: Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine, and Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and ensuing war. It analyses 1,600 speeches, comprising over 100,000 sentences, using text-as-data approaches. The findings contribute to research on ideational leadership, EU foreign policy dynamics, and the integration of member states’ core state powers.