The EU is often portrayed as a force of good in the world while there is growing criticism across the academia as to its actual role and impact. Although nuanced and constructive, most of this critique is almost completely absent from the public discourse. According to David Gazsi (King’s College London), taken seriously and engaged with appropriately, these newly emerging agendas can, however, contribute to the improvement of the EU’s external relations.
The European Union (EU) is often portrayed as a force of good in its engagement with the rest of the world for its eminent position as the biggest development donor on the globe, an ardent advocate for democracy and human rights as well as a promoter of regional integration and conflict resolution. This is particularly so in its immediate neighbourhood encompassing Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, where it spends billions of Euros on programmes aiming to stabilise these regions in political, economic and security terms.
Yet, if we take a closer look at the academic literature of the past 15 years or so, we are witnessing a steady increase in critical commentary on EU foreign policy. This is not to say that the views of scholars are getting any closer to beliefs propagated by ‘Eurosceptic’ political forces whose intentions range from substantially weakening the Union to abolishing it altogether. What we see emerging in the scholarly literature instead is constructive criticism aimed at the improvement of the Union’s conduct vis-à-vis the rest of the world so as to strengthen its position as a positive force in the global arena.
In a way, none of these commentaries are entirely new for most of the literature in question draws heavily on theories and methodologies that have been around since at least the 1960s. It is therefore even more surprising that these nuanced and productive critical takes have yet to find their way into the public discourse. There are two particularly noteworthy attempts that deserve to be mentioned here: the ‘decentring agenda’ offered by Nora Fisher Onar and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, as well as the work by Elena Korosteleva and her colleagues around the question of how to ‘bring the “Political” back’ into EU foreign policy. These two endeavours share a lot in common and differ primarily in their approach to understanding the same problems with the former being based in the tradition of postcolonialist theory while the latter in that of postmodernism.
As for their main commonality, both attempts reflect on the centrality of Eurocentric tendencies in the EU’s external conduct. In other words, EU foreign policy is charged here with taking for granted the primacy, or indeed superiority of norms and values that originate in Europe. While Eurocentrism in its worst form once served to justify colonisation and other forms of exploitation, its milder, enduring version is now seen to prevent the Union from imagining a new social order which could be accommodating to the diverse ‘lifeworlds’ (incl. norms, values, worldviews, practices, etc.) that exist beyond its borders. What this means in practice is that instead of working towards developing a shared ‘normal’ in agreement with its partners, the EU is often found aiming to shape other countries by its own standards. This is particularly the case in regions where the Union is on the advantageous end of power disparity, such as in its neighbourhood.
Starting from this premise, Fisher Onar and Nicolaïdis argue that the EU fails to acknowledge the ‘civilisationalist hierarchy’ built into its external actions and how this relates to its declining position in an increasingly multipolar world. Instead of changing its course of engagement and recognising that external action does not necessarily have to be tied to expectations of ‘dominance’, the EU gradually lowers its foreign policy ambitions. In a similar manner, Korosteleva and her colleagues highlight that the approach of the Union has been characterised by a ‘one-way-street’ transfer of pre-set standards to states in its Eastern European neighbourhood. This depoliticised procedure, which is guided mainly by the technology of expertise and the rule of bureaucracy, is seen to have been deprived of any opportunity for contestation. While a political process would allow to problematise, re-imagine, and experiment with power arrangements, the EU’s transactional agenda reflects an already institutionalised political order which is simply to be transplanted to neighbouring countries. Perhaps not surprisingly, this strategy is found to deliver questionable results.
However, both arguments point out that nothing necessitates the EU to end up with a foreign policy marked by moral controversies, waning ambitions, and patchy results. Besides theoretical contributions – which will not be detailed here –, the two attempts provide a set of practical guidelines for the EU to change its course of action. Fisher Onar and Nicolaïdis suggest for instance the ‘reconstruction’ of the EU’s external praxis on the basis of mutuality and local empowerment. This can mean, among other things, the setting up of autonomous joint institutions and the organisation of regular ‘decentred summits’ with partner countries. Korosteleva and the researchers around her highlight the importance of ‘differentiation’ in policy priorities vis-à-vis different partner countries which includes treating the extant policies of these states as referents or allowing for trade-offs in various policy areas where this is justified given the extent of available domestic capacities. Cooperation in this sense, goes the argument, shall be based less on expectations for normative convergence and harmonisation and more on tangible collaboration aimed at clear material incentives.
That the EU’s case is far from hopeless has already been demonstrated by a number of research findings. For instance, a study by Igor Merheim-Eyre looked at EU funded trainings provided to border guards in Ukraine and found that the curriculum used in this context was based on a mixture of Schengen and Russian standards. As Merheim-Eyre highlights, this has enabled an interplay of different normalities with the aim to find an optimal solution for the given context. In an earlier study, Korosteleva came to similar conclusions after looking at the EU’s democracy promotion endeavour in Belarus. The ‘microcosmos’ of sectoral cooperation between Brussels and Minsk proved, as Korosteleva shows, to provide ideal circumstances for reciprocal learning and critical reasoning. Finally, an analysis by Eske van Gills concentrating on EU-Azerbaijan relations demonstrates that there is an increasingly symmetrical distribution of bargaining power between Brussels and Baku. Azerbaijan, a strong economic actor in the global arena, requires to be treated as an equal partner by the Union. This has led to the contestation of the EU’s value promotion in bilateral relations, with Baku only playing along to the extent its own preferred standards are equally represented in discussions and policy inputs.
While these findings provide some positive signals, it is without doubt that there is still room for improvement for the EU. And there is also a lot more for us in the scholarly community to do with the intention to support this process. In March 2019, CER invited close to thirty academics and policy professionals from various European countries to a workshop to continue exploring possibilities for fine-tuning the theoretical components of the above agendas, and also plan out concrete practical steps the Union could take. This work, started last year, has since attracted several more colleagues from across Europe and North America and led to our focus expand beyond our continent to EU relations with countries in North Africa, the Middle East and even the Far East. What we see materialising in terms of findings in this network – soon to be disseminated in various forms of print and online publications – provides us with hope. It shows us that the answer to the question whether the EU could ever be a force of good in its neighbourhood and beyond can very well be an outright yes and not only – in Björk’s words – ‘possibly maybe’. So, stay tuned!
David Gazsi is PhD Candidate at King’s College London and Editorial Assistant with East European Politics. Until recently, he worked as Research Assistant at CER.
Photo credit: Dean Yeadon