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Institutional innovation of EU’s foreign and security policy: Big leap for EU’s strategic actorness or much ADO about nothing?

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Abstract

The analysis takes stock of the recent institutional developments within European Union’s foreign and security policy and examines to what extent the Union has managed to overcome some of the substantial hinders in the way for its evolvement into a strategic actor. The paper scrutinizes the impact of the recent dynamics within EU’s foreign and security policy on Union’s strategic actorness within three benchmarks: (1) the capacity to extract resources from various EU’s foreign and security stakeholders, (2) the ability to relate these resources to EU’s objectives and to express them within a general strategic narrative, and (3) the implementation of the strategy in the light of changes in the global arena. The article shows that these three benchmarks have been advanced and now it is up to the Member States to engage with it and to make the leap towards a strategic actor possible.

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Notes

  1. The role of the HR is set out mainly in Art 18, Art 27 and Art 34 of the Treaty of Lisbon.

  2. The information was obtained in an interview an official from EEAS, 15 September 2017.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the financial support of the National Research Council (along the project decision: DEC-2013/09/B/HS5/01356).

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  1. Hertie School of Governance, Friedrichstraße 180, 10117, Berlin, Germany

    Monika Sus

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Sus, M. Institutional innovation of EU’s foreign and security policy: Big leap for EU’s strategic actorness or much ADO about nothing?. Int Polit 56, 411–425 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0133-x

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