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Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice. He tweets at @Mij_Europe.
The feverish pitch of international diplomacy since the terrorist attacks on Israel have just highlighted Europe’s big conundrum: Why, as a global economic, trade and regulatory superpower, does the European Union find it so hard to be relevant and punch firmly on the global stage?
This problem has been cruelly highlighted by the bloc’s response to the Gaza crisis, seriously undermining its credibility as a foreign policy actor — and even undoing some of the gains it made following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
The EU’s initial response to the crisis was marked by European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi announcing a unilateral suspension of all EU development aid to Palestine, totaling some €691million, only to have the Commission then clarify the aid would be “reviewed” — not suspended.
Later, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s trip to Israel prompted a backlash in some EU capitals and the European Parliament for being too one-sided and pro-Israel, and for breaching her institutional mandate. Member countries are supposed to lead EU foreign policy, with the bloc’s aggregate position represented by its High Representative Josep Borrell.
This dissonance stands in stark contrast to the EU’s nominal ambitions as formulated by its member countries multiple times since 1993 — the year the bloc’s Common Foreign and Security Policy was launched as part of the Maastricht Treaty.
Since then, the EU has built a sizable institutional framework to give it more foreign policy muscle, most notably with the establishment of the High Representative position, in effect since 2009, the European External Action Service founded in 2010 and, most recently, with von der Leyen’s stated ambition of running a “Geopolitical Commission.”
Yet, whenever European diplomatic heft is required, it’s the larger member countries — notably Germany and France — that represent Europe at the international top table.
In moments of crisis, responsibility falls where power — and legitimacy — resides.
The most important reason for the EU’s struggles on the global stage is that — so far — its 27 members aren’t particularly interested in combining their foreign policy, or even military, at the supranational level. As foreign policy is seen as a core element of a nation’s sovereignty, genuine political integration remains relatively shallow and hard to achieve.
And while Berlin, tacitly supported by Paris, is making a push to move to more qualified majority voting in foreign affairs — to ensure an EU of potentially 35 members doesn’t turn into an unwieldy mess with the possible accession of Ukraine and the Western Balkans — there are other reasons contributing to Europe’s foreign policy weakness as well.
Apart from development cooperation in which the EU is a world leader, the bloc’s external affairs budget is comparatively small, and its diplomatic service doesn’t represent an entity with the direct political legitimacy that national governments enjoy.
Most importantly, the EU also lacks the coercive power that springs from owning a military, which enables the projection of power while also backing up diplomatic heft. Military firepower allows for security guarantees to be given to others too — a significant source of influence in international affairs that the EU lacks.
Additionally, 27 countries with different histories, geographies and competing conceptions of their own national interests means that member countries are often divided on how they interpret the world around them.
With respect to the Middle East, for example, some member countries, like Greece, have energy and defense agreements with Israel. Other pro-United States members like to express their Atlanticism by moving in lockstep with Israel. And while Germany’s steadfast support for the country has been motivated by its own unique history, France has its own distinctive, long-standing Arab policy.
Moreover, different Jewish and Muslim demographics within member countries also create political constraints.
Yet, this all underlines the importance of EU coordination — though it will necessarily come at the expense of speed.
While it’s true that Ukraine has forced the EU onto more geostrategic terrain — instigating the implementation of hard-hitting economic sanctions against Russia, innovative financing for arms procurement, Germany’s Zeitenwende defense policy and the bloc’s strategic re-embrace of enlargement — it’s also true that if the U.S. were to completely withdraw or drastically reduce its military aid to Ukraine, the EU wouldn’t be able to compensate.
Despite some notable progress since 1993 — and especially last year — the EU has never really turned into a cohesive, united and strategically minded foreign policy actor. The key obstacle is neither Brussels’ bureaucracy nor the treaties that define the inner mechanics of cooperation between the 27 members. Rather, it’s the deep-rooted unwillingness of EU capitals to genuinely pool and combine foreign policy assets.
But as the outlook for Europe is only going to get tougher — not only because of events unfolding in the Middle East but also the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency in the U.S. — member countries should perhaps reconsider this core belief: that retaining national sovereignty is more important than united action.
