Paper Titles & Abstracts

As the financial crisis has had an ever more paralysing effect on the European Union, and now threatens the very existence of the Eurozone, warnings have been sounded that EU external relations may become a collateral casualty. Specifically, attempting to deal with the crisis has diverted attention away from foreign policy, while the coming financial squeeze may deplete the traditional military and diplomatic resources of the EU and the members; is already diminishing the economic power of the EU; may undermine support for some of its core policies; and may fatally diminish the reputation, credibility and soft power of the EU. This paper examines these claims through the lens of classic critiques of the EU's foreign policy capability and effectiveness. It then evaluates them against the EU's foreign policy record since the onset of the financial crisis. It argues that although the current crisis does indeed impact adversely in most of the ways claimed, more traditional explanations still provide better accounts for the EU's actions, successes and failures during this period. The EU's biggest problem is not lack of resources, but the limited ability to apply the resources it does have in a coherent and effective way. That was a problem that by far predated the financial crisis and the new challenges it has posed for the EU. The financial crisis has certainly exposed and exacerbated the EU's problems as an international actor, and may even have made solving them more difficult, but it has hardly created them.