The internal consequences of crises

Abstract

‘Sarah Raine’s deeply informed, crisply written and authoritatively argued book will, I predict, swiftly become the indispensable analysis of Europe’s prospects as a strategic actor. The fact that she is clear-eyed (and dryly humorous) about the flaws and failures of European foreign and security policy makes her take on its strengths and possibilities all the more compelling.’

Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller, Robert Bosch Senior Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe

‘Love it or loath it, there will be no European Army any time soon: this is one of the conclusions of this well thought-out assessment. It factors in the transformational impact of Europe’s internal travails against a rapidly deteriorating and unforgiving strategic backdrop. The book is required reading for anyone who wants to form an educated opinion on Europe’s ability or inability to face these challenges in terms of policies, capabilities, money and organisation.’

François Heisbourg, IISS Senior Adviser for Europe; former commission member of France’s White Paper on Defence and National Security

‘The book brilliantly takes the reader through the strategic challenges facing Europe and makes the unfashionable argument that Europe has scored some notable successes as well as the well-known disappointments. Europe must act quicker, be more joined up and solve the tension between national policies and collective outreach. Sarah Raine makes a cautiously optimistic case that it may indeed do so.’

Peter Round, former capabilities director, European Defence Agency

Europe has suffered a decade of crises, with sovereign-debt troubles leading to austerity policies that exacerbated divisions inside member states and between them. Thereafter the Union was confronted with the challenges posed by a revanchist Russia in Ukraine and by a surge in migration from the Middle East and other conflict zones. The June 2016 United Kingdom vote to leave the Union threatened further damage to an institution that acknowledges it has failed to punch its weight in the spheres of foreign, defence and security policy. While that is a chronic shortcoming, its impact is becoming more acute as economic power moves east and Europe can no longer count on the steadfast support and leadership of the United States. The costs of Europe’s failure to achieve strategic coherence and effect are steadily rising.

This Adelphi book addresses the consequences of Europe’s multiple crises for its standing as a strategic actor, acknowledging its unique character and capabilities. It argues that strategic thought and action are belatedly being informed by the deteriorating security environment, and that nascent initiatives have the potential to effect a step-change. There are grounds for cautious optimism, visible in the success of stabilisation and counter-piracy operations as well as coordinated diplomatic activity. Also, the continent’s leading powers are becoming more pragmatic about how cooperation is organised within and beyond the Union. These developments offer the possibility that Europe might meet its aspirations to be a strategic actor of consequence, despite a long-track record of disappointment and the still-considerable obstacles that lie in its path.

Notes

1 Juncker repeatedly used the term ‘poly-crisis’ to describe the situation the EU faced.

2 Quoted in ‘Konrad Adenauer and the European Integration’, an Exhibition of the Archive for Christian Democratic Policy of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, p.5, http://www.kas.de/upload/ACDP/GB_Katalog_KA.pdf. Adenauer was addressing a meeting of his CDU party in 1946.

3 Charles de Gaulle, speech in Strasbourg, France, 23 November 1959.

4 For one perspective, see Harold James, Jean-Pierre Landau and Markus Brunnermeier, The Euro and the Battle of Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

5 Lluis Orriols, ‘El divorcio ideologico de Europa’, eldario.es, 12 June 2013, http://www.eldiario.es/piedrasdepapel/gran-divorcio-ideologico-Europa_6_142145798.html.

6 ‘Renzi – Reminding Europe of What it Doesn’t Have’, EUObserver, 2 July 2014, https://euobserver.com/eu-election/124846.

7 Joint EU–US Statement on the Asia– Pacific Region, Phnom Penh, 12 July 2012, A328/12, available at https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/131709.pdf.

8 Personal communications, Berlin, July 2012.

9 Jean-Claude Juncker, ‘State of the Union 2015: Time for Honesty, Unity and Solidarity’, Strasbourg, 9 September 2015, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm.

10 ‘We Don’t Want No Transfer Union’, https://www.economist.com/europe/2010/12/02/we-dont-want-no-transfer-union.

11 ‘Merkel Says Euro Bonds are “Absolutely Wrong”’, Reuters, 15 September 2011, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-germany-merkel/merkel-says-euro-bonds-are-absolutely-wrong-idUSTRE78E1KZ20110915.

12 For an interesting theory on a north– south governance divide, see Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014).

13 Anders Åslund, ‘The IMF Still Misunderstands the Euro Crisis’, ProjectSyndicate, 4 August 2016, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/imf-euro-crisis-response-by-anders-aslund-2016-08?barrier=accesspaylog.

14 See, for example, comments by Guy Verhofstadt seeking greater involvement for the European Parliament in the negotiations over the next round of the EU’s budget: ‘This is the only parliament worldwide that has no say on income. That has to stop now.’ ‘Debate with the Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenković, on the Future of Europe’, European Parliament, 6 February 2018.

15 Gideon Rachman, ‘Block Juncker to Save Real Democracy in Europe’, Financial Times, 2 June 2014, https://www.ft.com/content/c0fae448-ea38-11e3-8dde-00144feabdc0.

16 ‘Results of the 2014 European Elections’, European Parliament, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2014-results/en/country-results-sk-2014.html.

17 See, for example, tensions through 2018 over the proposed integration of the European Stability Mechanism (established through intergovernmental treaty) into EU law in the form of a European Monetary Fund. ‘Integration of the ESM into EU law by way of creating a European Monetary Fund (EMF)’, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-deeper-and-fairer-economic-and-monetary-union/file-integration-of-the-esm-into-eu-law-by-creating-an-emf.

18 For more on the historical evolution of the Eurogroup, see, for example, Uwe Putter, The Eurogroup: How a Secretive Circle of Finance Ministers Shape European Economic Governance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).

19 Björn Fägersten and Catharina Klingspor, ‘The Implications of the Euro crisis for European Foreign Policy’, UI Occasional Paper no. 22, November 2013, p. 8.

20 See, for example, the EEAS’s own review of its activities, published in July 2013, available at http://europeanmemoranda.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/files/2014/04/External_action_servive(_EEAS_Review_July_2013).pdf, or the EU Auditors review of the EEAS in 2014, available at https://www.eca.europa.euLists/ECADocuments/SR14_11/SR14_11_EN.pdf, that specifically highlighted the problem of poor financial resources and planning at the outset of the EEAS.

21 See, for example, the Committee for Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management (CIVCOM), where member-state divi-sions have been on particular display.

22 See data from the International Insti-tute for Strategic Studies, The Mili-tary Balance, various years; also state-ment by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, quoted by David Bond and Gemma Tetlow, ‘UK Missed 2% Defence-spending Target, Report Claims’, Financial Times, 14 Febru-ary 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/c4005130-10dd-11e8-8cb6-b9ccc4c4dbbb.

23 Lucie Beraud-Sudreau, ‘European Defence Spending: The New Consensus’, IISS Military Balance blog, 15 February 2018, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military-balance/2018/02/european-defence-spending. In 2017, European defence spending increased by 3.6% over 2016.

24 ‘To the Brink – and Back?’, Munich

25 Sven Biscop, ‘The EU Global Strategy: Realpolitik with European Characteristics’, Egmont Security Policy Brief, no. 75, June 2016.

26 See, for example, Eurobarometer survey 464b on the attitudes of EU citizens towards security, published by the EC on 12 December 2017, http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/SPECIAL/surveyKy/1569.

27 Rachman, ‘Block Juncker to Save Real Democracy in Europe’.

28 For more on the inherent tensions and problematic relationship between the two tracks of European integration, see Kathleen McNamara, ‘A Less Perfect Union: Europe after the Greek Debt Crisis’, Foreign Affairs Snapshot, 19 July 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/western-europe/2015-07-19/less-perfect-union.

29 Bruno Waterfield, ‘Francois Hollande tells European Commission it can’t “Dictate” to France’, Telegraph, 29 May 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10088005/Francois-Hollande-tells-European-Commission-it-cant-dictate-to-France.html.

30 European Commission, ‘Towards a Sustainable and Fair Common EuropeanAsylumSystem’pressrelease, 4 May 2016, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1620_en.htm.

31 For details of the proposed reform, see ibid.

32 The road map noted the EU’s role as the first world’s ‘first responder’. In 2016, the EU granted asylum to and resettled three times as many refugees as the US, Canada and Australia combined. See European Commission, ‘Migration: A Roadmap’, https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/20171207_migration_a_roadmap_en.pdf.

33 Conversation with EC official, 12 February 2018.

34 For one example of the many articles praising this, see ‘Rediscovering the Fundamental Value of EU Solidarity’, Irish Times, 14 May 2018, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/rediscovering-the-fundamental-eu-value-of-solidarity-1.3493615.

35 For more details, see Stefan Lehne, ‘Are Prime Ministers Taking Over EU Foreign Policy?’, Carnegie Europe, 16 February 2015, https://carnegieeurope.eu/2015/02/16/are-prime-ministers-taking-over-eu-foreign-policy-pub-59070.

36 Alex Barker and Peter Spiegel, ‘EU Sets Out Framework for Banking Union’, Financial Times, 11 December 2013, https://www.ft.com/content/f65fa1ee-61e6-11e3-aa02-00144feabdc0.

37 Mark Bromley, Export Controls, Human Security and Cyber-surveillance Technology: Examining the Proposed Changes to the EU Dual-use Regulation (Stockholm: SIPRI, 2017).

38 See, for example, the European Commission’s 2009 Defence Procurement Directive, transferred into national law in all EU member states by 2013, and its Transfers of Defence-Related Products Directive of the same year.

39 Poland remains legally committed to adopting the euro, but one reason it weathered the global financial crisis so well was because it had not yet done so. In 2012, one Polish commentator argued ‘the main long-term threat [to the Polish economy] stems from the country’s future participation in the euro’. Witold M. Orlowski, ‘Poland has Survived the Economic Crisis Remarkably Well, but the Country Faces a Future Dilemma over Adopting the Euro’, LSE EUROPP blog, 25 September 2012, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2012/09/25/poland-economic-success-orlowski/.

40 ‘White Paper on the Future of Europe: Five Scenarios’, 1 March 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/white-paper-future-europe/white-paper-future-europe-five-scenarios_en.

41 David Herszenhorn, ‘EU’s Iran Fight is Not about Iran (or Trump)’, Politico, 30 January 2019, https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-iran-fight-diplomacy-nuclear-deal/.

42 Discussions with German Foreign Office officials. See, for example, the warning of Polish President Andrzej Duda in September 2017 that, should countries be excluded from the inner core, it would mark the ‘beginning of the end of the Union’.

43 For further discussion, see Emmanuel Morlon-Druol, ‘Rethinking Franco-German Relations: A Historical Perspective’, Bruegel, November 2017, http://bruegel.org/2017/11/rethinking-franco-german-relations-a-historical-perspective/.

44 François Heisbourg, ‘The Union at Europe’s Heart is Frayed’, Financial Times, 20 January 2013, https://www.ft.com/content/871534b8-6005-11e2-8d8d-00144feab49a.

45 Quentin Peel and Hugh Carnegy, ‘Europe: An Uneven Entente’, Financial Times, 20 January 2013, https://www.ft.com/content/37c2ae62-6182-11e2-9545-00144feab49a.

46 Conversation with German Chancel-lery official, December 2015.

47 Conversation with former senior French MoD official, Brussels, January 2017.

48 For one take on shifting French interests in EU defence cooperation, see Claudia Major and Christian Mölling, ‘France Moves from EU Defence to European Defence’, Carnegie Strategic Europe blog, 7 December 2017, https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/74944.

49 ‘Flexing its Muscles’, The Economist, 17 August 2013, https://www.economist.com/europe/2013/08/17/flexing-its-muscles.

50 Jana Kobzova, ‘The Visgrad Group in Eastern Europe: An Actor Not a Leader (Yet)’, V4 Review, 4 April 2012, http://visegradrevue.eu/?p=561.

51 For details on Germany’s positioning towards the V4, see Andrea Gawrich and Maxim Stepanov, ‘German Foreign Policy towards the Visegrad Countries’, DGAP Analysis, 29 September 2014.

52 See Orbán’s speech at the XXV Bálványos Free Summer University and Youth Camp, 26 July 2014, available at https://budapestbeacon.com/full-text-of-viktor-orbans-speech-at-baile-tusnad-tusnadfurdo-of-26-july-2014/.

53 See http://www.norden.org/en. For more on the difficulties of institu-tional cooperation in recent years, see Christian Opitz and Tobias Etzold, ‘Seeking Renewed Relevance: Institutions of Nordic Cooperation in the Reform Process’, SWP Comment 2018/C 03, January 2018.

54 For example, Catherine Gregout has argued that the Quint can serve a useful leadership purpose within the EU. Catherine Gregout, European Foreign and Security Policy: States, Power, Institutions and American Hegemony (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

55 Conversation with UK diplomat, late February 2012. Campbell travelled to Brussels and London on 22–23 February. Confirmed in conversation with a former US State Department official at the IISS Shangri-la Dialogue, June 2012.

56 Conversations with several member-state diplomats at the time of both the Campbell visit and shortly after the Russell visit.

57 Jean-Claude Juncker, ‘A New Start for Europe: My Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change’, Strasbourg, 15 July 2014, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/juncker-political-guidelines-speech_en.pdf.

58 The European Commission recom-mended opening negotiations on EU accession with Serbia, and on a Partner-ship and Stabilisation Agreement with Kosovo. See European Commission, ‘Serbia and Kosovo: Historic Agreement Paves the Way for Decisive Pro-gress in their EU Perspectives’, press release, 22 April 2013, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-347_en.htm.

59 Jean-Claude Juncker, ‘The European Union: A Source of Stability in a Time of Crisis’, 14th Norbert Schmelzer Lecture, The Hague, 3 March 2016.

60 ‘EU sees Us as Leader, We’ll Work Even Harder – PM’, B92.net, 7 February 2018, https://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2018&mm=02&dd=07&nav_id=103434,

61 Federica Mogherini, press conference, 6 February 2018, https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/39436/remarks-high-representativevice-president-federica-mogherini-college-read-out-present-western_en.

62 Robert-Jan Bartunek and Robin Emmott, ‘EU Opens Door to Balkans with 2025 Target for Membership’, Reuters, 6 February 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-balkans/eu-opens-door-to-balkans-with-2025-target-for-membership-idUSKBN1FQ1XE.

63 The result was a compromise text setting out ‘a path towards opening accession negotiations in June 2019’. Jacopo Barigazzi, ‘EU Ministers Postpone Albania and Macedonia Accession Decision’, Politico, 26 June 2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-european-union-ministers-general-affairs-council-postpone-albania-and-macedonia-accession-decision/.

64 Tanja Miscevic, ‘The EU as Seen from Serbia’, ECFR Commentary, 14 March 2018, https://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_the_eu_as_seen_from_serbia.

65 Florian Eder and Andrew Gray, ‘Brussels’ New Balkan Strategy: Tough Love’, Politico, 6 February 2018, https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-balkan-membership-new-strategy-tough-love/.

66 Ruben V. Atoyan et al., ‘Public Infrastructure in the Western Balkans: Opportunities and Challenges’, IMF Europe Department paper no. 18/02, 17 April 2018, p. 1.

67 These pre-accession mechanisms can be used without necessitating enlargement. Indeed, the term ‘pre-accession assistance’ is liberally used in the European Commission’s 31-page proposal for the next multiannual budget, yet ‘enlargement’ does not appear once. Georgi Gotev, ‘Commission Budget Proposal Hardly Makes EU Enlargement Possible’, Euractiv, 2 May 2018, https://www.euractiv.com/section/enlargement/news/commission-budget-proposal-hardly-makes-eu-enlargement-possible/.

68 See, for example, Kemal Kirisci and Onur Bülbül, ‘The EU and Turkey Need Each Other. Could Upgrading the Customs Union be the Key?’, Brookings Order from Chaos blog, 29 August 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/08/29/the-eu-and-turkey-need-each-other-could-upgrading-the-customs-union-be-the-key/.

69 See, for example, Mehmet Ugur, ‘Why the EU Should Not Upgrade the Customs Union with Turkey’, Social Europe, 8 February 2018, https://www.socialeurope.eu/eu-not-upgrade-customs-union-turkey.

70 See the excellent book by Kemal Kirisci, Turkey and the West: Faultlines in a Troubled Alliance (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017).