Esther Barbé (IBEI) Pol Morillas (CIDOB)
The EU has been portrayed as a benign power in the international system. However, due to the effects of globalization and the crisis of European integration, the role of the EU in the world is becoming more contentious. This paper applies the politization literature (Kriesi and Grande) on the contours of political conflict to EU Foreign Policy, using the case of the recent Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy (2016). According to the politization literature, the globalization and European integration processes have contributed to the emergence of a new integration-demarcation (or cosmopolitan-nationalism) cleavage that embodies the structural crisis the whole European integration process is going through. Contrarily, this paper argues that the integration-demarcation cleavage does not necessarily imply the erosion of both the institutional and policy dimensions of European integration. We argue that the EU Global Strategy, paradoxically, is simultaneously an example of the reinforcement of Brussels institutions (integration) and an example of the constraint of the self-proclaimed solidarist approach to international affairs, based on the European normative identity (demarcation). On the one hand, this paper analyzes the EU Global Strategy policy-making process to conclude that there is a process of deepening integration resulting in an increased role of Brussels-based institutions in strategy-making. On the other, this paper shows how the contents of the EU Global Strategy showcase a withdrawal of the European ambition to transform the international milieu.
