EU in the World: Summary

The EU in the World

Just as perspectives vary on understanding the EU as an organization or political system, disagreements exist on understanding its global role. The EU functions as a unified bloc in trade matters, especially concerning single market access. However, in foreign and security policy, member states retain individual interests despite common positions, preventing the EU from being a global actor on par with the United States or China. Sub-groups of EU states collaborate on projects, notably the 19 members of the Eurozone.

The EU has long lacked focus, consistency, and policy leadership, leading to confusion among other countries. This was exemplified by Henry Kissinger's question: ‘When I want to speak to Europe, whom do I call?’ To address this, the position of High Representative was created in 1999 to serve as the primary contact for foreign and security policy. This role was reinforced by the Treaty of Lisbon, granting new powers such as seats in the European Commission and the Council of the EU, alongside managing a new EU diplomatic service. Despite these efforts, the presidents of the Commission and the European Council still represent the EU in many high-level meetings.

While the EU's progress in building a common foreign and security policy has been slow, its global economic status is clear. Before Covid-19, it accounted for nearly one-fifth of global GDP and about 15% of global trade in goods. The EU is a dominant player in global trade negotiations, the largest market for mergers and acquisitions, the biggest source of foreign direct investment, and the largest provider of aid to developing countries. Despite ongoing issues with the single market and the Euro, the EU's global economic presence is substantial, leading to high expectations from both its members and other countries. Whether the EU has met these expectations remains debatable.

The EU has been both a driver and beneficiary of globalization, but the pandemic has raised questions about how the world will adjust. This chapter will explore EU activities in foreign, security, and trade policy, noting greater progress in establishing the EU as a trading power than as a foreign policy or military actor. It will also assess EU relations with key global regions, including the United States, neighboring states (particularly in eastern Europe), Russia, and China, and review EU development policy. The chapter argues that while the EU has made progress in clarifying its role as a global actor, significant work remains in adapting to the changing international system after Covid-19.

The Changing Global System

During the Cold War imposed predictability on the global balance of power, with the Americans and Soviets and their respective clients. The end of the Cold War ended this predictability, leading to a more changeable and uncertain balance of political, economic, and military power. The United States remains the most powerful global actor, but its economic future is uncertain, and its military effectiveness is increasingly questioned due to non-military threats like climate change and terrorism. Meanwhile, China's global presence continues to grow, authoritarianism is making a comeback, the Middle East remains a source of tension, and Africa is emerging from a history of dependency.

In 2005, Jim O’Neill coined the acronym BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) to denote the rising presence of these countries. Some suggest adding an S for South Africa. While useful for headlines, these acronyms oversimplify the commonalities, but they came out of the global financial crisis well, and they have provided market competition for the EU and the United States, they also offered new opportunities for EU exports and investments before Covid-19.

Against this backdrop, the EU's progress in developing a collective foreign policy has been halting, and it continues to struggle with internal problems like unemployment, market stagnation, immigration concerns, backlash against integration, and the fallout from the Eurozone crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has added new uncertainties. The world will be different after the pandemic, but the details of those differences and their impact on the EU remain unclear.

The pandemic exerted enormous pressure on the EU's decision-making at home, compromising its ability to present a united view to the world. The EU has long been a civilian rather than a military actor on the global stage, devoting more resources to cooperation and addressing non-security threats like pandemics, climate change, and refugee crises. Despite disagreements, EU member states have a history of working together and are familiar with the challenges and opportunities of cooperation. Depending on the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, the EU has the potential to play a key role in building a new global order.

Foreign Policy

In building a common European foreign policy, EU leaders face many challenges. While acting as a group is necessary to increase the EU's influence, there are concerns that coordination will interfere with state sovereignty and national interests. Legal and constitutional difficulties regarding policy responsibility also complicate the picture. EU leaders are divided on how closely to align with the United States and how much to build policy independence for the EU. (Disagreements with the Trump administration pushed many towards greater independence.) Finally, the EU's global influence is limited by its lack of a unified military and defense policy.

Despite leaders' opinions, many Europeans support a common EU foreign policy:

• Polls from 1992 to 2019 show that 60-70% favored a common EU foreign policy, with only 20-25% opposed. Support was strongest in Cyprus, Germany, Lithuania, and Slovenia (above 80% in 2019) and lowest in Sweden (56%) and Denmark (44%).

• 70-75% supported a common EU defense and security policy, with about 20% opposed. Opinion on an EU army was more divided, with about half in favor and 40% opposed. Support was strongest in France and the Benelux countries and weakest in Finland and Sweden.

• More than two-thirds surveyed between 2015 and 2019 felt that the EU’s voice counted in the world, particularly among smaller member states.

Understanding the EU as a Global Actor

Defining the EU's place in the global system and the influence it exerts remains a challenge. Realists emphasize military power, dominated by the United States, but global influence also involves economic and other means, which have become more important after Covid-19. Soft power, defined by Joseph Nye (2004) as ‘the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion,’ centers on culture, political ideals, and policies rather than violence.

Critics argue that the United States relies too much on hard power, leading to a decline in its foreign policy credibility. In contrast, the EU has become adept at using soft power in its dealings, emphasizing peacekeeping, diplomacy, political influence, and economic competition. However, the EU is not unwilling to use hard power. Military forces from EU member states have been active in Afghanistan and Iraq, and national military interventions have occurred, such as France’s operations in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali. The EU has also imposed sanctions against numerous countries, including trade and travel bans, arms embargoes, and freezing of funds.

There is a focus on the EU’s qualities as a ‘normative power,’ where influence is expressed through norms, values, and ideas rather than military and economic capacity. Manners (2002) suggests the EU has based its external relations on principles like the European Convention of Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UN Charter. The five core norms of the EU are the centrality of peace, the idea of liberty, and support for democracy, the rule of law, and human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Treaties of Rome

The Treaties of Rome didn't mention foreign policy, and the EEC focused on domestic economic policy. However, the spillover effect meant that the development of the single market would make it difficult to avoid the agreement of common external policies. Key developments included the failed European Defence and Political Communities, Charles de Gaulle’s plans for regular leader meetings to coordinate foreign policy, the 1970 launch of European Political Cooperation (EPC) where foreign ministers coordinated policy positions, and the 1974 creation of the European Council.

The Single European Act confirmed that member states would ‘endeavour jointly to formulate and implement a European foreign policy,’ but the Gulf War of 1990–91 revealed the Community's disunity and unpreparedness. The United States orchestrated a multinational response, with Britain and France making major troop commitments, while other Community members were lukewarm or neutral. Belgian foreign minister Mark Eyskens described the EC as ‘an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a military worm’ (Whitney, 1991).

Under Maastricht, the EU adopted a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) with loosely defined goals, such as safeguarding ‘common values’ and ‘fundamental interests,’ preserving peace, strengthening international security, and promoting international cooperation. Despite this, the member states converged on positions on key international issues, and their UN ambassadors coordinated policy. This resulted in:

• Common strategies, such as those on Russia and Ukraine.

• Joint actions, such as transporting humanitarian aid to Bosnia and sending observers to elections in Russia and South Africa.

• Common positions on EU relations with other countries, including the Balkans, Burma, the Middle East, and Zimbabwe.

The EU also coordinated western aid to eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet republics during the 1990s and became the major supplier of aid to developing countries. However, weaknesses and divisions remained, particularly in the Balkans in the 1990s, where the United States led the brokering of the 1995 peace accords. The EU's weak response to the 1998 crisis in Kosovo also highlighted these shortcomings, with NATO, led by the United States, leading the military response in 1999.

Some structural weaknesses in the CFSP were addressed by the Treaty of Amsterdam, which created a Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit in Brussels to help the EU anticipate foreign crises and centralized foreign policy coordination within the new post of High Representative for the CFSP. However, these changes were insufficient to prevent the split over the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Supporters of US policy included Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and many in eastern Europe, while opponents included Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Greece. Finland, Ireland, Portugal, and Sweden took no position. Public opposition to the invasion was uniform, with 70–90% opposed in every EU member state. One poll even found that 53% of Europeans viewed the United States as a threat to world peace on par with North Korea and Iran (European Commission, 2003).

The disagreement shook EU–US relations, raising questions about the EU's reliance on US leadership in foreign and security policy. It also highlighted the EU's poorly developed foreign policy structures. Consequently, the Treaty of Lisbon confirmed the revamped post of High Representative (HR), making the office-holder a member of the Commission and of the Foreign Affairs Council in the Council of the EU, and director of a new European External Action Service (EEAS). The president of the Commission and the president of the European Council are also part of the EU foreign policy mix, but the combination of the HR and the EEAS has created something resembling a European department of foreign affairs.

Security and Defence Policy

While dealing with the foreign element of the CFSP hasn't been easy, it’s been less politically troublesome than dealing with the security element. In total, the EU member states have formidable military power at their disposal including nuclear weapons (in France), nearly 1.6 million active personnel, nearly 3,000 combat aircraft, and more non-nuclear submarines and surface naval combat vessels than the United States (aircraft carriers excepted). Were it to agree a common defense policy and shared command structures, it might transform itself into a military superpower. In practice, though, EU security policy has been another example of differentiated integration: EU governments have independent opinions and priorities when it comes to committing their forces, there is still only limited coordination on policy, the British departure from the EU greatly decreased its military assets, and progress on setting up an EU defense force has been slow.

There has also been an ongoing division of opinion within the EU about how to relate to NATO and the United States, and Europeans generally prefer using civilian rather than military means for conflict resolution. The EU as a security actor is still in its ‘early infancy’ (Howorth, 2014).

Maastricht stated that one of the goals of the EU should be ‘to assert its identity on the international scene, in particular through the implementation of a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing of a common defense policy’.

Maastricht provided a loophole by committing member states to a common policy that would ‘include all questions related to the security of the Union, including the eventual framing of a common defense policy, which might in time lead to a common defense’.

In 1992, EU foreign and defence ministers meeting at Petersberg, near Bonn, Germany, agreed that military units from member states could be used to promote the Petersberg tasks: humanitarian, rescue, peacekeeping and other crisis management jobs (including peacemaking). The Treaty of Amsterdam incorporated the Petersberg tasks into the EU treaties, and in 1999 the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) was launched with the goal of building the ability of the EU to deploy military forces into the field at short notice and for short periods of time (see Howorth, 2014).

The terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 forced a review of defense policy priorities on both sides of the Atlantic: terrorism could not be met with conventional military responses. Many EU leaders hoped for a new era in transatlantic relations, with a new US emphasis on multilateralism and diplomacy, but these hopes were dashed in the fallout from the dispute over Iraq, which emphasized to many that the EU needed to more forcefully outline and pursue its distinctive position on security issues.

In 2003, the European Council adopted the European Security Strategy, arguing that the EU was ‘inevitably a global player’, and ‘should be ready to share in the responsibility for global security’, listing the key threats facing the EU as terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts, failing states and organized crime. Against the background of a changing transatlantic relationship, the draft EU constitution included the stipulation that the EU should take a more active role in its own defence, talking of the ‘progressive framing of a common Union defence policy’ leading to a common defence ‘when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides’.

Despite these initiatives, the question still remains as to how EU defence forces should be organized, and how the EU should relate to NATO. Atlanticists such as Denmark and Poland feel nervous about compromising the US commitment to Europe. Meanwhile, Europeanists such as France continue to want to develop an independent EU capability.

Another of the changes that came with Lisbon was the renaming of the ESDP as the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In 2017, a new initiative called Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) was launched under which all but two EU member states (the exceptions being Denmark and Malta) have agreed to pursue the structural integration of their national armed forces.

Trade Policy

While there are doubts about the EU's willingness or capacity to become a major military actor, its status as an economic superpower and leading role in the global trading system are clear and the single market is all but complete, the Euro has been adopted by 19 member states, and the commission has the authority to speak on behalf of the EU in global trade negotiations. Before Covid-19, the EU sat alongside China and the United States as one of the three biggest importers and exporters of goods, and due to its sheer market size and its pivotal role in world trade, Gstöhl and de Bièvre (2018) concluded that it had become an economic and political powerhouse to be reckoned with.

There have always been questions about the terms of trade between the EU and its trading partners. It is not always clear how far increased trade contributes to job creation or growth in GDP, poorer countries complain that trade agreements with the EU often create more dependency and give better terms to wealthy EU farmers and industrialists. The EU working together as a unit continues to achieve more than if its member states negotiated separately.

The global economic presence of the EU has been built on the foundations of the single market and the Common Commercial Policy, to which end the EU has built a complex network of multilateral and bilateral trading networks and agreements

The growth of EU trade power has also been helped by an institutional structure that promotes common positions among the member states. Most importantly, once the member states have agreed a position among themselves, the Commission is left to negotiate external trade agreements on behalf of the EU as a whole. So if Henry Kissinger was to ask to whom he should speak in Europe regarding trade matters, the answer would be clear: the EU trade commissioner.

The power of the EU is particularly clear in the role it has played in global trade negotiations. In 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was launched to oversee a programme aimed at removing trade restrictions and liberalizing trade; it was replaced in 1995 by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The GATT/WTO negotiations have taken place in successive rounds in which the EU states negotiate as a group.

More telling as a measure of EU trading power has been the frequency with which it has been at odds with the United States. The EU and the United States have brought more cases before the WTO than any other members, and in many instances the disputes have been between the EU and the United States; they have tussled in recent years over such matters as hormone-treated beef, banana imports, trade with Cuba, tariffs on steel, subsidies to aircraft manufacturers, intellectual property rights, trade in services, and the tax regimes of third countries.

Relations with the United States

The transatlantic relationship is – in economic, security and political terms – the most important in the world, however, it has blown hot and cold considering that the EU and the United States are both major allies and major competitors. US administrations saw integration as a way of helping the region recover from the ravages of war and of improving European security in the face of the Soviet threat.

Relations cooled in the early 1960s with Charles de Gaulle’s concerns about American influence in Europe, and continued to cool as the United States and its European allies fell out over Vietnam, and over West German diplomatic overtures to eastern Europe. The 1971 collapse of the Bretton Woods system emphasized to many Europeans the unwillingness of the United States always to take heed of European opinion on critical issues.

While both sides hold common views on the merits of democracy and capitalism, however, divisions of opinion have become more common and more substantial with time. This has been partly a result of the reassertion of EU economic power since the end of the Cold War, partly a result of the relative decline of US influence in the wake of the Iraqi controversy and the global financial crisis, and more recently of EU concerns about the volatile foreign policies of the Trump administration. It can also be explained by the fact that Americans and Europeans often have different values:

• Americans place more emphasis on military power than Europeans.

• Unilateralism plays a greater role in American calculations than the multilateralist tendencies of the Europeans.

• The often-unapologetic support given by the United States to Israel says much about the different worldviews of Americans and Europeans. The two sides have quite different thoughts about the responsibilities of government

Exemplifying the changed nature of EU–US relations, efforts to reach a transatlantic trade agreement have been abandoned by the Trump administration. After several false starts dating back to the 1990s, negotiations began in 2013 on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In the event, the Trump administration halted negotiations on the TTIP and instead initiated a trade dispute with the EU.

Relations with the Neighbourhood

If there are questions about the global reach of the EU, there are far fewer about its impact on its immediate neighborhood, where four distinct rings of influence can be identified:

• The 13 ‘eastern’ enlargement states that have joined the EU since 2004

• States that have short-term or longer-term potential to become members of the EU (including candidate countries such as Albania, Montenegro and Serbia).

• States that have strong economic links with the EU (notably Norway, Switzerland and the UK).

• States that do not qualify for membership but cannot escape the gravitational pull of the EU (much of the Middle East, North Africa and Russia)

The Community was quick to take a leading role in responding to the fallout from the end of the Cold War, coordinating western economic aid to the east and creating in 1990 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which channelled public money from the EU, the United States and Japan into development of the private sector in the east. More significantly, several requests came from eastern Europe for associate or full membership of the EU.

The significance of eastern enlargement was considerable: it gave final confirmation to the end of the Cold War, gave new meaning to the definition of Europe, and reduced the distinctions between Europe and the European Union. At the same time, though, eastern European governments and citizens have sometimes struggled with the task of transforming their economies from central planning to the free market, of moving from one-party authoritarianism to multiparty democracy, and of making sure that domestic laws are adapted to EU law.

Alongside enlargement, the EU has pursued agreements and cooperation with its neighbours that have different intentions. In 1995 the Barcelona Process was launched with the goal of strengthening ties between the EU and all other states bordering the Mediterranean. Meanwhile the European Neighbourhood Policy was launched in 2004, encouraging a relationship that the EU describes as ‘privileged’, and with the goals of promoting democracy, human rights, the rule of law, good governance and market economics.

The most troubling questions about the EU’s role in its neighbourhood revolve around its relationship with Russia. At first relations were positive, with Russia seeking the kind of respectability and economic opportunities that the EU could offer, while the EU sought Russian support for eastern enlargement. Then Russia began to worry about its economic imbalance with the EU, and looked askance at the applications for EU membership from three former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Then came the events of 2013–14 in Ukraine, at the heart of which was the question of whether the country wanted to ally itself with the EU or Russia. Today the EU–Russia relationship remains tense, particularly energy: the EU relies on Russia for much of its oil and gas needs, while Russia is only too aware that the EU not only accounts for 70 per cent of its exports but is also the biggest source of foreign investment in Russian industry and infrastructure.

Relations with China

Among the fastest set of changes in the global system today is the rising role and influence of China. To be sure, it is still relatively poor (with a per capita GDP about one-fifth that of Germany), it lacks a currency with global credibility, and it does not yet have a military with global reach. However, it has a large population and a rapidly transforming economy, is a huge market for raw materials and agricultural products, and is a major source of consumer products to the rest of the world. China is now the EU’s third biggest market for the export of goods (after the US and the UK) and the biggest source of its imports

For centuries Europe and China have had trade links that have impacted both sides, yet their physical distance from each other has led to a high degree of mutual misunderstanding, and it is has only been since the mid-1990s that there have been efforts to build closer relations between the two. Even today the story is not a simple one, being complicated by questions about China’s long-term plans and the changing dynamics of the tripartite relationship between the EU, the US and China.

Ties between China and the Community were established in 1975. Casarini (2009) subsequently saw the EU–China relationship going through three phases:

• A period of constructive engagement from the mid-1990s, during which time a series of EU–China summits were held.

• A strategic partnership between the two sides in 2003–05, marked by cooperation on technology, notably space and satellite navigation.

• A phase of ‘pragmatic restraint’ in light of US concerns about how the relationship had been evolving.

Since then, matters have evolved, with an expansion of Chinese global power, and a tightening of domestic control by China’s authoritarian government. The EU is deeply critical of China’s poor human rights record, and there have been disagreements on climate change and other issues, but where the two sides had once rarely spoken to each other at the diplomatic level, joint meetings have become almost routine.

China’s economic aspirations are reflected in the steady rise in the size and reach of Chinese multinationals, and in the 2013 launch of the Belt and Road Initiative. The aim of this newer enterprise is to streamline China’s trade interests in Asia, to ensure stable energy supplies, to promote the development of Asian infrastructure, and consolidate Chinese regional influence. In short, China is more clearly becoming an economic competitor to both the EU and the United States, forcing a reappraisal of policy towards China on the part of both.

Development Cooperation

The long history of European colonialism has left the EU with a heritage of close economic and political ties to the South: Latin America, South Asia and Africa. Several of the founding members of the Community – notably France and Belgium – still had colonies when the Treaty of Rome was signed, and when Britain joined the Community in 1973 it brought more mainly former colonies into the equation. As a result, the South has been a significant factor in the external relations of the EU, the core of the relationship being a programme of aid and trade promotion involving several dozen former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific – the so-called ACP states.

The EU aid programme has several aspects. As well as allowing all Southern states to export industrial products to the EU tariff- and duty-free, the EU provides food and emergency aid, and sponsors development projects undertaken by NGOs. The EU has also negotiated a series of cooperative agreements with the ACP countries. These began with the 1963 and 1969 Yaoundé Conventions which gave 18 former colonies preferential access to Community markets.

Opinions were mixed about the effects of these initiatives. On the one hand, they helped build closer commercial ties between the EU and the ACP states, and there was an overall increase in the volume of ACP exports to western Europe from the 1960s to the 1990s. The conventions were widely criticized, though, for perpetuating economic dependence, and for encouraging the flow of low-profit raw materials from the ACP to the EU, and the flow of high-profit manufactured goods from the EU to the ACP

A new agreement was signed in Cotonou, Benin, in 2000, designed to run for 20 years with revisions every five years. A post-Cotonou agreement was being negotiated and was due to come into force in early 2020, but with failure to conclude negotiations the Cotonou agreement was extended, the Covid-19 pandemic creating new uncertainties about the future direction of EU-ACP policy.

Meanwhile, the EU has become the biggest source of official development assistance in the world. Covid-19 recovery has now become a key part of the EU’s development aid calculations.

Conclusions

European integration was born as a way to help the region rebuild after the Second World War, and to remove the historical causes of conflict in the region. It began life with an introverted domestic agenda, leaving leadership on wider foreign and security policy issues to the United States.

The EC/EU had no choice but to become more extroverted, and integration has since had implications not just for Europe but for the EU’s relations with the rest of the world. The EU by the 1990s had turned its attention squarely to common foreign and security policies.

Events in 2001–04 were to prove a critical turning point, with the terrorist attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq. The new economic role of the EU combined with growing wariness of US global leadership to make it clear that entirely new expectations were being directed at the EU.

The changes of the last few years – not least the massive disturbances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic – have made it clear that the EU must work to give its international identity clearer definition, to assert itself on the global stage, and to build political influence. The EU may never achieve the qualities of a military power, but it is more adept at using soft power, and at building on its political, economic and diplomatic advantages.