By Chad Damro and Deyan Dimitrov Following the recent publication of the EU’s Strategic Review on external action, Chad Damro ...
By Chad Damro and Deyan Dimitrov
Following the recent publication of the EU’s
Strategic Review on external action, Chad Damro and Deyan
Dimitrov write that we
must rethink what we mean by foreign policy. Through the lens of Market Power Europe, the external dimensions of the EU’s internal policies can
be just as important as traditionally understood elements of external action.
They argue that through the coordinated externalisation of its internal
policies the EU can find and develop its foreign policy strengths.
With all the
attention surrounding Greece and its negotiations with creditors this summer,
an important development in EU foreign policy has largely passed under the
radar. The recently released EU Strategic Review,
advanced by High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Federica Mogherini, is an ambitious document that provides a first step towards
a global strategy for the Union’s external action.
It is an attempt to
move away from the outdated 2003 Security Strategy and
assess the EU’s position and capabilities in a much changed and complex world.
Ultimately, Mogherini plans to deliver a new EU Global Strategy for foreign and
security policy by June 2016. While this ambition is welcome, being global is
about more than geographic scope – it must also mean spanning across policy
areas. To put the ‘global’ into a Global Strategy, the EU needs to be able to
identify and utilise all the external tools at its disposal and to create an
integrated and cross-policy approach that goes beyond traditional foreign and
security policies.
If the EU is to have a new vision for
its external action, it is time to embrace and encourage a broader
understanding of what is meant by foreign policy. Beyond the security and
defence policies often associated with foreign policy, the EU’s other policy
areas – including its predominantly internal policies – have considerable
external dimensions and effects. By explicitly integrating the external
dimensions of internal policies, the EU can develop a more confident,
productive and ‘global’ strategic vision that contributes in innovative and
decisive ways to achieving foreign policy objectives.
The notion of Market Power Europe (MPE)
helps to capture the importance of the EU’s internal policies for external
action. For MPE, the Union’s external action is notable for the large size of
its market; various institutional capabilities, networks and platforms; and the
role of domestic societal interest groups. MPE does not depict the EU as an
exclusively neo-liberal and capitalist actor. Rather, it captures the
importance of interventions in the market via economic and social regulation
and, therefore, emphasises the EU’s ability to promote externally (whether
persuasively or coercively) its economic andsocial agendas.
From such a perspective, external
action is extensive and needs to be thought of as more than the EU’s
traditional external policies: security, defence, trade, development,
humanitarian aid, enlargement and neighbourhood policy. Rather, foreign policy
also covers all areas related to the external dimensions of the EU’s internal
economic and social market-related policies and regulatory measures. Such areas
include, but are not limited to, policies on: agriculture, competition,
consumer protection, the digital economy, energy, environment, food safety,
fraud prevention, health, migration, maritime and fisheries, monetary and
financial affairs, and labour and social affairs.
High Representative
Mogherini is particularly likely to be aware of the need to integrate the
external dimensions of internal policies, as she chairs monthly meetings of all
commissioners with an external portfolio, which she has remarked includes
‘trade, development, humanitarian aid, neighbourhood policy but also energy and
climate, migration, to ensure the coherence of the EU as a global actor’.
Likewise, in its report on the EU as a Global Actor in Search of a
Strategy, the European Commission signaled the importance of
integrating the external dimensions of internal policies into a future foreign
policy strategy.
The EU’s new Strategic Review makes an
inroad by acknowledging that an increasing number of internal policy areas have
developed their own versions of diplomacy and issue linkage. The document
identifies environment, justice and home affairs, culture, science and research
as some relevant areas. However, for all its ambition, the Strategic Review
falls short of truly breaking the mould of traditional security issues.
While security issues like the Common
Security and Defence Policy, counter-terrorism and international migration are
important, focusing primarily on the capabilities (or lack thereof) in these
security-oriented areas is too limiting. Such a strategy risks overlooking a
host of tools at the EU’s disposal and it underestimates the Union’s real
ability to exercise power in a much broader sense.
The comprehensive approach suggested
here reflects and would enhance the EU’s existing capabilities and strengths,
because it is through the externalisation of the vast array of internal policies
that the EU often influences other actors in the international system. This
externalisation also shapes external perceptions of the EU, as state and
non-state actors across the globe engage with and experience the Union’s
internal policies on a daily basis.
Mainstreaming the external dimensions
of internal policies into EU foreign policy thinking is not to say that
challenges in one policy area must always be linked to those in others (at the
risk of sacrificing objectives in the former). Rather, the idea here is that
thinking about the tools, capabilities and implications of each policy area for
other policy areas must become more joined up, comprehensive and consistent.
This is a tall order for an actor that
struggles to show coherence in its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).
However, it is crucial to incorporate internal policies more fully into
external action because these policies already provide the basis for the EU’s
most consequential external impact – through the promotion of its economic and
social agendas. In fact, the EU’s competence and coherence in many of these
policies already tends to be greater than those found in the CFSP.
In order for the EU’s emerging Global
Strategy to be successful, it needs to be more ambitious in scope by capitalising
on the capabilities and tools of the Union’s oft-overlooked internal policies.
It must also become more innovative in its approach by starting to think of its
foreign policy explicitly in more cross-policy and ‘global’ terms.
About The Authors:
About The Authors:
Dr Chad Damro is Co-Director of the Edinburgh Europa Institute, Jean
Monnet Chair and Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the
University of Edinburgh. His research areas include international relations,
international political economy, transatlantic relations and the EU in the
world.
Deyan Dimitrov is Research Assistant in the Edinburgh Europa Institute
at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include international
relations, international political economy, EU internal policies and EU enlargement.
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Publication Details:
Originally Published at European Futures / 10 August 2015
Please note that this article represents the view of the author(s) alone
and not European Futures, the Edinburgh Europa Institute nor the University of
Edinburgh.
This
article is licensed under a Creative
Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International) License.
