ADVANCING EU FOREIGN POLICY

Author: Dr. Jana Puglierin

At a time when, more than ever, the EU needs to act as a united international player in order not to become a pawn in the hands of major powers, the European member states are increasingly struggling to find the energy and political will to set aside their disagreements and focus on the European common interest. The EU often had no adequate answers to foreign policy crises, and its influence on the international system as a whole has declined.

The reasons that have so far prevented a proactive and coherent European foreign policy are connected to the nature of foreign policy as a core element of national identity and sovereignty. They are also deeply rooted in the structural inconsistency of supranational and intergovernmental elements in CFSP governance. In sum, CFSP suffers from 

• an ongoing lack of unity and consistency both between EU institutions and member states and between the member states’ national foreign policies;
• the reluctance of member states to hand over sovereignty and powers to Brussels;
• a lack of loyalty and (therefore) a lack of willingness to compromise;
• the member states’ skepticism about the added value of the EU as a framework for foreign policy action;
• a fragmentation of external competences.

Today, the number of foreign policy challenges has massively increased. Given the limited influence that even the largest European countries have relative to major powers like the US or China, the EU is the only instrument European states will be able to use to advance some – if not all – of their most important foreign policy objectives.

Although the list of foreign policy challenges for the EU is long, four crucial areas stand out because they shake the very foundations of European foreign policy. In these areas, Europeans have only two options: collective empowerment or autonomous decline. They are:

• Protecting multilateralism in an increasingly national, unilateral world
• Shoring up the transatlantic relationship
• Dealing with a rising China
• Catching up in the race for AI and new technologies

The Lisbon Treaty provides more scope for the Europeanization of foreign policy than is currently being used. While some of the treaty’s unused instruments could speed-up the decision-making process and would give external powers much less incentive to cultivate Trojan horses in the EU, the realization of this potential depends solely on the political will of the member states. When pushing for progress on the implementation of the treaty’s unused instruments, one should be careful not to dissuade more member states from pursuing their common foreign policy interests through the EU legal framework. After all, qualified majority voting (QMV) or “constructive abstention” are not silver bullets for solving all of the CFSP’s problems in one fell swoop. 

In the coming years, European states might have to choose what is more important to them even more often: EU unity or the European ability to act. It might well be that the latter cannot be achieved with all 27 member states (after Brexit). Some European member states may be even more willing to move ahead with a selected group of like-minded partners that are ready to act together expediently. It is important to shape the coalitions in a way that does not undermine the cohesion of the EU-27. 

The involvement of EU officials, respect for smaller partners’ sensibilities, and an inclusive and transparent approach are essential. The European Council should focus much more on foreign policy issues than is currently the case, and its president, Charles Michel, should steer this debate in a strategic way. A good working method would be to discuss foreign policy objectives and strategy together in the European Council and then task a coalition of willing-and-able member states with their implementation, offering incentives.

Discussing how to create a stronger CFSP – one that is more than the extended arm of national foreign policies – presupposes that the member states are actually prepared to grant real leadership to an actor that speaks and acts on behalf of the EU. The Brexit negotiations serve as a role model for how such an approach can be successfully implemented, taking the interests of both the member states and the institutions into account. While Michel Barnier was able to speak on behalf of the EU and his task force coordinated the Commission’s work on all strategic, operational, legal, and financial issues related to these negotiations, member states remained in the driver’s seat of the negotiations at all times. This method could also be applied to foreign policy. 

The new leadership team in Brussels – President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, and European Council President Charles Michel – will have to address an ambitious foreign policy agenda. The conditions for European foreign policy have changed radically in recent years. The EU currently finds itself in a world dominated by the rivalries of major powers, with a rising and ever more vigorous China, a revisionist Russia, and a United States that endorses a transactional worldview while promoting “America First.” The EU’s “business model,” based on multilateralism and the rules-based international order, is increasingly under pressure, even within Europe. Over the past decade, the EU’s effort to project this model outward has collapsed; its immediate neighborhood has transformed from a circle of potential friends and partners into a ring of instability. 

It is long past time for the EU to achieve more European “strategic autonomy,” defined as the “ability to act, together with […] partners wherever possible, but alone when necessary.” So far, the debate about “strategic autonomy” and the attention of European foreign policy decision-makers and EU institutions has primarily focused on defense issues – not least because of how President Trump has pressured the Europeans to take on more of the military burden and deal with the multiple crises in Europe’s neighborhood without America’s help. As a result, in the last three years, the EU has directed a lot of its energy toward strengthening the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). In the process, it has achieved visible successes, notably the establishment of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defense Fund (EDF), whose purpose is to jointly develop European defense capabilities, invest in shared projects, and enhance the operational readiness of armed forces. But while there has been some progress on European defense policy, the overarching diplomatic and foreign policy framework is still very much missing.

In sum, CFSP suffers from 

• an ongoing lack of unity and consistency both between EU institutions and member states and between the member states’ national foreign policies;
• the reluctance of member states to hand over sovereignty and powers to Brussels;
• a lack of loyalty and (therefore) a lack of willingness to compromise;
• the member states’ skepticism about the added value of the EU as a framework for foreign policy action;
• a fragmentation of external competences.

Despite the “Brusselization” of the CFSP, the EU’s foreign policy machinery remains detached from actual decision-making, which is still intergovernmental and based on unanimity. Consequently, all major strategic decisions in CFSP continue to be taken at the level of the heads of state and government: in the European Council. CFSP is often little more than an expression of the “lowest common denominator” of diverging interests.

Furthermore, EU institutions still lack the power to prevent member states from pursuing their own independent foreign policies, which they are running in parallel to that of the Union, and which are shaped by their different geopolitical interests, threat assessments, socioeconomic aims, and historical trajectories. Over the past ten years, divergent national points of view have frequently led to an uncoordinated cacophony instead of a common EU position. Although member states are obliged by the Lisbon Treaty to cooperate and coordinate their policies in order to achieve a higher degree of coherence in European foreign policy, this principle of loyal cooperation is de facto unenforceable. Member states’ actions are only constrained by their sense of loyalty. If a single member state decides to break ranks and ignore a position that had previously been jointly agreed, the EU is a helpless bystander. This has prevented the EU from expressing a unified position in many critical cases, as the failure to adopt joint statements on China, Venezuela, or the INF Treaty has demonstrated. 

The unanimity principle in European foreign policy has not only stalled or hampered the EU’s decision-making process in the last decade, but it has also offered an incentive for foreign powers to cultivate Trojan horses among the EU member states, through which they are able to influence decisions or block them altogether. 

The CFSP is trapped in a vicious circle. On the one hand, Brussels institutions do not have the necessary power to successfully shape foreign policy because the member states do not want to give up crucial competences and sovereignty. Many member states, in turn, doubt whether the post-Lisbon institutional setup has led to more efficiency and question the usefulness of the HR and the added value of the EEAS, making them even more reluctant to give up further competences and empower Brussels. But if member states do not delegate competences to EU institutions and trust the HR and the EEAS more, these Brussels organizations will never be able to prove that they are better positioned to address collective problems than the member states.

Recent years have shown that member states often choose informal ways to cooperate on a minilateral basis, rather than use the formal institutional structures and procedures of the CFSP. For member states, the added value of working through the CFSP framework has to be considerable to justify the hurdles. Firstly, since decisions have to be taken by consensus, the decision-making process is more cumbersome and much slower. 

Secondly, in the minds of national decision-makers, domestic political considerations carry a lot of weight. As Euroskeptic parties have risen throughout Europe, their skepticism toward “Brussels” has also found its way into the foreign policy discourses of the European member states. This makes it harder for national decision-makers to argue for the benefit of working through EU structures and to get public support – especially because the EU has so few foreign policy success stories to show, and political legitimacy is anchored at the national level. 

After having made an evaluation of the relative effectiveness – and political expediency – of the various means at their disposal, member states have often preferred to make foreign policy initiatives on their own or in small, informal coalitions – even though they could have submitted initiatives directly to the Council to get the EU to take action. This trend increases the risk that the EU framework will become arbitrarily interchangeable and that member states will start to look at the EU as just another one of the multilateral forums where they pursue their national foreign policy goals. What’s more, it weakens the sense of loyalty that is supposed to discourage member states from going it alone at a national level. 

On the other hand, the establishment of an informal coalition of states was often the only possible way to address specific policy issues at all, such as when the EU – through its formal institutions or legal framework – was unable or unwilling to take action. In its December 12, 2018, resolution on the annual report on the implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the European Parliament acknowledged that ad hoc coalitions of member states “could render EU external action more flexible and responsive in the short term in addressing changing situations, by reducing the pressure of having to achieve universal consensus among the member states.”

An additional structural problem is that the CFSP is only one part of the EU’s external relations. The whole spectrum of EU external action goes far beyond the CFSP and includes trade and development policy, humanitarian aid, enlargement, and neighborhood policy, as well as external aspects of migration or environmental policy. While the CFSP continues to be decided by the member states, the other areas are largely within the competence of the Commission. Even though the Lisbon Treaty tasks the High Representative, in his secondary capacity as Vice-President of the Commission, to ensure a certain coherence, there remains a lack of coordination between him, the member states, and the Commissioners in dealing with external competences. The EU Global Strategy (EUGS) recognizes this predicament and calls for a more “joined up Union” and an integrated approach, highlighting that more cooperation among the EEAS, the other institutions, and the member states is needed. However, work still needs to be done, especially since some of the most pressing foreign policy challenges include areas not strictly within CFSP – like trade wars, emerging technologies, or climate change.

The changing international environment and mounting external challenges have given new momentum to further developing the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Some EU member states – among them Germany and France – have recently re-emphasized the need to make progress and called for a more effective EU foreign policy. The new Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also supports a stronger role for the EU in foreign, security, and defense policy. Additionally, in its new strategic agenda for 2019–2024, the European Council commits to making more resources available and to better using those the EU already has at its disposal. It is therefore important that words are now followed by actual deeds.

If the gap between big announcements and poor foreign policy performance persists, the EU’s foreign policy will lose its legitimacy. A clear majority of Europeans would like the EU member states to act together on the international stage. In Eurobarometer surveys, around two thirds of respondents regularly favor “a common foreign policy of the 27 member states of the EU.” The member states thus have a clear mandate from their citizens to push for a more effective EU foreign policy. If the impression is created that “the EU does not deliver,” this will be fuel added to the fire for Euroskeptic forces.

If the EU really wants to play a greater international role in the future – de facto a precondition of its survival – it must organize itself better and act more coherently and effectively. The reasons that have so far prevented a proactive and coherent European foreign policy are connected to the nature of foreign policy as a core element of national identity and sovereignty. They are also deeply rooted in the structural inconsistency of supranational and intergovernmental elements in CFSP governance. Big institutional reforms, implying treaty changes, are currently not in the cards. Nor is it likely that member states will show an increased willingness to hand over significantly more sovereignty to Brussels. 

Useable instruments and methods that would improve CFSP’s effectiveness and could be applied within the given operational framework are available. At this point, the most promising way to push EU foreign policy forward seems to be focusing on informal coalitions of smaller groups of states taking over foreign policy portfolios and seeking ways to make this beneficial for the Union’s overall foreign policy. Creating a stronger CFSP – one that is more than the extended arm of national foreign policies – presupposes that the member states are actually willing to subordinate their own national goals to a common European goal and make the necessary compromises. 

If European leaders do not manage to come up with a strong collective response at least in the four crucial policy areas identified – protecting multilateralism, shoring up the transatlantic relationship, dealing with a rising China, and catching up in the race for AI and new technologies – they will no longer be able to shape the world according to their preferences in the future.