War exposes cracks in European foreign policy

Welcome back. In mid-September, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual State of the Union speech in Strasbourg. Since she took office in 2019, she said, “we [in the EU] have seen the birth of a geopolitical Union”.

Less than a month later, war broke out between Hamas and Israel, highlighting disagreements among the EU’s 27 member states and incoherence among policymakers at the bloc’s headquarters in Brussels. Does this mean that von der Leyen was wrong and the EU is far from being a real geopolitical power? I’m at tony.barber@ft.com.

More than almost any international dispute, the Middle East has a way of exposing the limits of the EU’s aspirations to operating an effective common foreign policy. Take a look at this commentary for the Carnegie Europe think-tank, headlined “Europe’s moment of powerlessness in the Middle East”, by Pierre Vimont, a former senior French diplomat who served from 2010 to 2015 in the EU’s external action service.

Other issues pose difficulties for the EU, as well: Russia and Ukraine, the south Caucasus, north Africa, China and — lest we forget — what Europe will do if Donald Trump or another Republican captures the White House after next year’s US presidential election.

Progress in patches

That said, the picture isn’t uniformly negative. In a speech in June, Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, mentioned some areas where the bloc has made progress over the past four years.

At the top of his list was energy security. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he said, “we have liberated ourselves from a toxic import dependence on Russian oil and gas that was built up over decades. Nobody thought it was possible but we did it.”

Borrell also contended that the EU is now doing a better job at countering disinformation from malign foreign actors — a topic I reviewed in a newsletter in August.

A third area of progress, according to Borrell, is the EU’s implementation of a security and defence concept known as the “Strategic Compass”. This aims to strengthen the EU’s capabilities in cyber defence, intelligence, space and maritime security, as well as enabling the rapid deployment of up to 5,000 troops to different types of crises.

Still, it’s clear that EU foreign policy is often ineffective in ways that contrast with the bloc’s impressive clout in business regulation and international trade.

Let’s look at the problem from three angles: differences in outlook among national governments; political and social divisions within member states that affect each country’s foreign policy; and institutional disorder in Brussels.

EU discord on Middle East and Russia

On the Middle East we saw this week, in the build-up to a summit of EU heads of government, how some countries favour a firm pro-Israel line and others want to emphasise the protection of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

These differences not only undermine the EU’s already limited influence in the Middle East, but risk distracting governments from the task of funding and arming Ukraine’s war of self-defence. A related point is that countries in the so-called “Global South”, indignant at the EU’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war, may feel less inclined to back the European position on Ukraine.

Even on Russia and Ukraine, we see differences among EU governments. Earlier this month, Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán visited Beijing and became the first EU leader to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin since the International Criminal Court indicted him for alleged war crimes in March.

True, Orbán is way out of line with the rest of the EU on Russia. But the EU’s latest funding plans for Ukraine are held up because of resistance from Hungary — a matter tangled up with disputes over a proposed increase in the EU budget and Orbán’s clashes with Brussels over the rule of law.

Internal splits in European countries

Sometimes, domestic political quarrels hamper a European government’s ability to set out a clear national position on foreign policy — and there’s no better example than the Middle East.

France is embroiled in a row over the radical leftwing opposition leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s attacks on Israeli policies, as explained in this Le Monde article.

There are similar disputes in Spain, where leftist parties are strongly pro-Palestinian — presenting an awkward problem for caretaker prime minister Pedro Sánchez, who takes a more cautious line but whose prospects of leading a new government depend on cutting a deal with the radical left.

In the UK (not an EU member any more, but an important voice in European foreign policy as a whole), Sir Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour leader who appears on course to be the next prime minister, is battling to contain criticism from Muslim MPs in his party over his stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

Institutional disorder in Brussels

Under the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which came into force in 2009, foreign policy was intended to become more dynamic. It created a permanent president of the European Council, which brings together heads of government, and an external action service led by a foreign policy chief who also sits in the European Commission.

Yet the Middle East war has cast an unforgiving light on how these arrangements can sometimes go wrong. First, Olivér Várhelyi, the EU commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement issues, announced a freeze on aid to the Palestinian territories. He took this step without consulting other commissioners, let alone national governments, and the EU quickly disowned it.

Next, von der Leyen visited Israel and delivered a strong message of support for the country’s right to self-defence. She came under instant criticism from lower-level EU officials and some national governments, which disliked the perceived lack of balance in her public statements and the fact that she appeared to be asserting a right to speak on their behalf on foreign policy.

Underlying this dispute is the problem — an open secret in Brussels — that von der Leyen has a poor relationship both with Charles Michel, the current EU council president, and with Borrell.

Other governments know about the EU’s difficulties and sometimes delight in exploiting them. A case in point emerged in 2021, when Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan snubbed von der Leyen at talks in Ankara by offering a chair to Michel but not to her.

Soft power, hard power

At times, the ineffectiveness of EU foreign policy comes down to a lack of hard power and regional influence. The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which dates to the years surrounding the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, is a good example.

After fighting resumed in 2020, the EU “emerged as the diplomatic lead among the western actors” in trying to broker a settlement, as the International Crisis Group wrote in a September 2022 commentary.

Yet these efforts proved fruitless as Azerbaijan reconquered the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh last month, triggering the flight of almost all the local ethnic Armenian population. Now there are concerns that Azerbaijan may take the war into the territory of Armenia proper — though Baku denies it has such plans.

The EU’s ability to restrain Azerbaijan, never great in the first place, has been limited even more by its urgent need to find new energy suppliers after the break with Russia. One such supplier is Azerbaijan.

Defence spending: much to be desired

An effective foreign policy rests in part on the capacity and willingness to deploy military force. EU governments have beefed up defence expenditure since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but many European members of Nato still fall short of the alliance’s target of an annual 2 per cent of gross domestic product.

Giles Merritt, founder of the Friends of Europe think-tank, comments:

“Thirty years of ‘peace dividend’ since the cold war have taken a heavy toll of defence budgets and industrial capacity, even if these are being slowly ratcheted up.”

Reforms of decision-making

In preparation for enlargement into eastern and south-eastern Europe, a process that could turn the EU into a community of more than 30 countries, governments and policymakers are looking closely at whether to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting in foreign policy. This way, it is thought, it would no longer be possible for one country to hold up decisions.

However, it won’t be straightforward. As Annegret Bendiek writes for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs:

An important source of the political deadlock [on the issue] can be found in the fear that qualified majority voting would overstretch the readiness of member states to agree on highly sensitive issues. Some worry that its introduction would expand the already existing cleavages between eastern (new) and western (old) member states.

What do you think? Can the EU become a true geopolitical power? Vote by clicking here.

More on this topic

Is European defence missing its moment? — An analysis by Luigi Scazzieri for the Centre for European Reform

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