The EU’s foreign policy and the search for effect
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117813497304 |
| Author | Geoffrey Edwards |
| Published date | 01 September 2013 |
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Relations
27(3) 276 –291
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117813497304
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The EU’s foreign policy and
the search for effect
Geoffrey Edwards
University of Cambridge
Abstract
The Lisbon Treaty sought to meet new global challenges by providing the European Union
(EU) with stronger institutional capacity and policy instruments to make it a more effective
international actor in foreign and security terms. The article sets out the structures and practices
agreed and contested by both Member States – especially the United Kingdom and France – and
the European Commission, focusing on the roles of the High Representative (HR) for Foreign
Affairs and the European External Action Service. It points to the disjuncture between the formal
calls for greater coherence and consequence in the EU’s foreign policies, the problems of creating
an effective policy vehicle and the practices that undermine both its efforts and its legitimacy.
Keywords
coherence, legitimacy, policy effectiveness, policy instruments, policy-making capacity
Introduction
‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better’.1
International Relations as a discipline has tended to steer clear of looking too closely at
the European Union (EU). It does not easily fit prevailing approaches even in the case of
more liberal, pluralist theorising, which takes account of non-state actors in the interna-
tional system. The tendency then has been to focus either on other intergovernmental
organisations or non-governmental organisations. Separately, and largely independent of
developments within the International Relations discipline, a sub-field devoted to the
foreign, security and defence policy of the EU has flourished. Its focus has largely been
on the specificities of the EU’s international roles and modalities and the relationship
Corresponding author:
Geoffrey Edwards, POLIS, University of Cambridge, Alison Richard Building, West Road, Cambridge CB3
9DT, UK.
Email: gre1000@cam.ac.uk
497304IRE27310.1177/0047117813497304International RelationsEdwards
2013
Article
Edwards 277
between the EU’s Member States and processes of decision-making and implementation
of collective foreign and security policy.
This article explores one aspect of the EU’s external policies, the Common Foreign and
Security Policy (CFSP), a policy that remains essentially dependent on unanimity or at
least consensus among the European Member States. While EU policy on trade and a
whole range of external polices have increasingly been decided on the basis on Qualified
Majority Voting (QMV) and with the growing participation of the European Parliament,
Member States have been determined to retain control over foreign policy and, indeed,
Europe’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). And yet, through successive
Treaty reforms from Maastricht in 1993 to Lisbon in 2009, the same Member States have
consistently called for a more effective common foreign policy and have been gradually
strengthening the role of the EU’s central institutions and blurring some of the distinctions
between external economic and foreign policies. As a result, EU foreign policy demon-
strates characteristics of authority and autonomy as raised in the Introduction of this Special
Issue, even while that authority continues to be contested and its autonomy is highly
circumscribed.
Hence, what is developed here are the arguments that lie behind the key characteristic
of EU foreign policymaking, the collective and persistent problem of reconciling the
continuing, sometimes jealously guarded, capacity for national foreign policymaking
with the declared aspiration, and an evolving infrastructure, for a common, effective
European foreign and security policy. Greater coherence has been constantly evoked
and, progressively, continuity – though not necessarily consistency – has been developed
in collective foreign policymaking through institutionalisation.
Europe as an actor?
Continuous incremental Treaty reform has had to be set against differences over the rel-
evance, nature and effectiveness of the EU as an international actor that have been
expressed by both practitioners and academics. The US National Intelligence Council in
2008, for example, appeared to write the EU and its Member States out of significance
in the twenty-first century, predicting that in 2050, Europe would be ‘a hobbled giant
distracted by internal bickering and competing national agendas and (even) less able to
translate its economic clout into global influence’.2 The so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, and China), and especially perhaps China, were held up in marked contrast. And
that was before the economic crisis, and especially Euro-zone crisis, which, as the Head
of the EU delegation in Washington suggested, ‘has not helped portray a vibrant, dynamic
image of Europe’.3 On the contrary, there have been others, such as Andrew Moravcsik,
long a student of European integration, who have been more positive, describing the EU
as ‘The Quiet Superpower’ and arguing that:
Europe today is more effective at projecting civilian power than any other state or non-state
actor. Some of these instruments are wielded by a unified Europe, some by European governments
acting in loose coordination, some by European governments acting unilaterally.4
Significantly, not all EU Foreign Ministers have been so sanguine. As the French
Foreign Minister Alain Juppé put it:
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