The concept of sovereignty has not been popular in the official EU’s discourse for a long time, but this has changed in recent years since representatives of the Union have turned to the categories of European sovereignty and strategic autonomy. Through the prism of critical chronopolitics, F. Polak’s concept of the image of the future and discourse analysis of EU’s official discourse, the author explores how new categories influenced the image of the future in Brussels’ worldview. Three points are of particular importance. Firstly, new concepts establish primary focus on the areas of technology/digitalization, environment protection, foreign policy / defense. The development of each of these areas helps to strengthen the sovereignty / autonomy of the EU within such a narrative. Secondly, the new categories work within the framework of transition plot, constituting a symbolic world map of Brussels through a combination of orientalism and historicism. Thirdly, the categories contribute to the optimistic and pessimistic half of the image of the future, representing rather a temporal discursive prolongation of the current status quo than utopia and dystopia.