Research Papers

Although emotions play an important role in international affairs they have received little attention by international relations and European foreign policy scholars. Numerous authors have emphasised this shortcoming for several years now, but there are still only very little systematic study into emotions and even fewer related to empirical studies. This is also true for emotion such as solidarity, which is a defining factor in how states and societies address the challenges they face as well as how they relate to one another. The article first examines the analytical link between solidarity and instrumentality and breaks the literature on solidarity down into three groups: as epiphenomenal, as a tool for rhetorical actors, and as a source of social construction. After developing a theoretical framework, the article explains the power of solidarity in main areas of the EU’s external relations. More specifically, this paper compares the policies of France, Italy, Germany and Poland since 2004 towards the Eastern and Mediterranean region within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The paper argues that French, Italian, German and Polish different political and financial involvement in EU’s external relations as well as contrarious prioritizations of policy in both cases cannot sufficiently be explained by rationalist, interest‐based approaches and offer a solidarity supplement to fill in the gaps.