Harvard International Review
The new European External Action Service gives the European Union the opportunity to better project its collective voice on the world stage. But it also brings new challenges. The role of the Service in the European ‘neighborhood’ is one of them.
“Speaking and acting together we can achieve more”. With these words Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, inaugurated the new European External Action Service (EEAS) on Wednesday, December 1st. With the EEAS - the world's first supranational diplomatic service - come new opportunities for member states to coordinate their activities on the world stage. There also come new challenges.
In its dealings with the twenty-seven national diplomatic services the EEAS will have to navigate cautiously between under-performance and over-encroachment. Issues of financing and legislative scrutiny remain thorny ones. But perhaps the greatest long-term challenge will be that of “speaking and acting together” in the European neighborhood.
The case of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) is instructive. The ENP was established in 2004 “with the objective of avoiding the emergence of new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and our neighbors and instead strengthening the prosperity, stability and security of all.” It offers sixteen countries in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, the Levant and North Africa a privileged relationship, including political association and economic integration. The job of hammering out common EU positions on these sixteen neighbors has not always been easy.
The 2008 Georgia crisis, for example, stymied the ENP by splitting the Union down the middle, with Central Europeans, Brits and Nordics on one side and the likes of France, Italy and Germany on the other. The latter, for historical, geographical and cultural reasons, sought a conciliatory stance towards the Russian Bear; the former favored a more robust line.
On Europe’s southern borders too the policy has fallen foul of internal splits. In 2007 German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the new, French-led ‘Mediterranean Union’ as “very dangerous”. She accused it of undermining the common Euro-Med policy by excluding Northern Europeans, who, she warned, “also share responsibility for the Mediterranean, just as the future of the borders with Russia and Ukraine is an issue that concerns those living on the Mediterranean”.
Divisions over energy security have further undermined the notion of a coherent ENP; each of the rival Nord Stream, South Stream and Nabucco pipelines (which, with EU financing, will pump gas to Europe via the Baltic, Black Sea and Turkey respectively) has different supporters and detractors amongst member and neighborhood states. South Stream, for example, is championed by the Italians, quietly backed by the pro-Nord Stream Germans, denigrated by the pro-Nabucco Czechs and wished a “peaceful death” by the Ukrainians. The ‘common external energy policy’ envisioned within the ENP remains a distant prospect.
These are not isolated examples. Whether on human rights in Syria, sanctions on Belarus, Turkish-Armenian relations or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Azerbaijan, an engaged, unified European agenda is often elusive. The precise nature of the ENP is itself disputed; whether it is an alternative to membership - or a stepping-stone - depends on which EU government you ask. Small wonder then, that some ENP components, such as counter-terrorism, are simply not used, and that NATO’s new Strategic Concept, like its predecessors, envisions no clear role for the EU’s neighborhood partnerships.
So does the ENP’s record portend badly for the EEAS? Not necessarily. In each of their 137 operational locations, the EU’s envoys will have to cultivate a sensitive role within the diplomatic community. Counter-intuitively, this may prove easiest in major centers such as Washington, Beijing and New Delhi. Where Europe wants a seat at the top table it has most to gain by pooling its diplomatic capital.
Nearer to home the fragmented imperatives of geography, demography, culture and security make a monolithic EU position less feasible, and in some cases less desirable. The relative benefits of clubbing together are fewer, and the challenge of reconciling member states’ asymmetrical interests and priorities is greater. For example, Italy patently has less at stake in the relationship with Ukraine than Hungary. The UK’s strategic calculus when dealing with Syria is different to that of France. Slovenia might be less concerned with Moroccan security issues than Spain. Et cetera.
The EU’s relations with the varied countries in its neighborhood will always be complex. As such, they represent a key test for the capabilities of the EEAS. Will the Service make the EU a better steward of its own intractable margins? If so, its prospects of projecting Europe’s influence elsewhere will be strong indeed.
