A Maritime Power in the Making? Explaining EU Maritime Foreign and Security Policy Integration

How can we explain EU maritime foreign and security policy integration? What are the mechanisms driving integration in this domain? This paper seeks to tease this out in an in-depth study of the adoption of the EU Maritime Security Strategy (EUMSS). The EUMSS was adopted in 2014, despite initial opposition of several member states. To explain the EUMSS, the chapter explores the relevance four analytically distinct hypotheses across different policy-making processes. The analysis finds that the EUMSS can be explained in three phases where different mechanisms were at work. First, in line with a neo-realist hypothesis, structural changes in the maritime global security environment created a window of opportunity for a coalition of member states to place a maritime strategy on the EU agenda. Second, the EEAS and the Commission had a key role in driving a cross-sectoral strategy forward, in line with rational institutionalist predictions. Third, geopolitical events, especially those linked to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, created a security environment that was acted upon by a pro-EUMSS coalition to get it adopted. The study also suggests that the normative content of the EUMSS has not been contested, suggesting that norms influenced the EUMSS through the mechanism of habitual response. This has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of EU foreign and security policy, suggesting that the EU even in this policy area has reached a level of maturity where certain standards and norms of appropriate behaviour are taken for granted, indeed even being part of the EU’s external identity.