Research Papers

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 these ways, more traditional explanations provide better accounts for the EU’s actions, successes and failures during this period. Most of the problems identified existed in some form well before the financial crisis came along to make life more difficult. And the most serious issue for the EU’s foreign policy aspirations is one which by far predates the financial crisis, namely the need for consensus in decision-making. This one issue makes it both exceedingly difficult for the EU to make effective use of the resources it does have, and make it all the harder to cope with the difficulties induced by the financial crisis. In this way the crisis has 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.