Resilience and the role of the European Union in the world

ABSTRACT

The idea of resilience in EU academia and practice predates the EU Global Strategy. But it is with the 2016 EUGS that resilience was elevated into one of the five guiding principles for the EU’s role in the world. This article recounts the origins of the concept in the context of European foreign policy. Resilience reflected the implicit goal of the EUGS to foster a more joined-up approach to European foreign policy, it epitomized the philosophy of principled pragmatism enshrined in the EUGS, and it captured the transformative approach to complex change advocated by the EU. The implementation of the EUGS over the last three years has been a story of lights and shadows. However, the idea of resilience lives on also and perhaps even more importantly because of its changing interpretation in the European policy debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• European Union
• security
• European foreign policy
• EU Global Strategy

Disclosure statement

Nathalie Tocci has served as Special Advisor to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission (HRVP) between 2014 and 2019. The analysis and reflections in this article, while representing exclusively the personal views of this author, are based on the personal experiences of the author over the course of five years within the EU institutional system.

Notes on contributor

Nathalie Tocci is Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), Honorary Professor at the University of Tübingen, and Special Advisor to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission (HRVP). On behalf of HRVP Federica Mogherini, Tocci drafted the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) in 2016 and followed its implementation for three years, including by drafting the end of mandate review the EUGS in June 2019. Prior to joining IAI, she held research positions at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, the Transatlantic Academy, Washington, DC, and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence. She is the (co-)author and co-editor of Framing the EU’s Global Strategy (Springer-Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), The EU, Promoting Regional Integration, and Conflict Resolution (Springer-Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Turkey and the European Union (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Multilateralism in the twenty-first Century (Routledge, 2013), Turkey’s European Future: Behind the Scenes of America’s Influence on EU-Turkey Relations (New York University Press, 2011), The EU and Conflict Resolution (Routledge, 2007). Tocci is the 2008 winner of the Anna Lindh award for the study of European Foreign Policy.