EU Foreign Policy Differentiation and Integration: Informal Groups in EU Approach to Conflicts and Crises

Project Information

EUDIC

Grant agreement ID: 892444

DOI

10.3030/892444

Project closed

EC signature date 11 March 2020

Start date 1 February 2021

End date 24 August 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 163 673,28

EU contribution

€ 163 673,28

Coordinated by

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EUDIC (EU Foreign Policy Differentiation and Integration: Informal Groups in EU Approach to Conflicts and Crises)

Reporting period: 2021-02-01 to 2023-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project aimed to advance our understanding of differentiation and integration in the European Union’s (EU) approach to conflicts and crises. The overall goal was to examine why informal groups of member states have persisted in EU foreign policy after the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty even though member states formally delegated further discretionary power to EU institutions and to what effect. The Lisbon Treaty should have further centralized member states' foreign policies after decades of progressive integration. Instead, informal groups of member states have often directed how the EU responds to conflicts and crises, frequently by engaging with non-EU players in formalized settings for international cooperation without getting a formal mandate from EU institutions and/or the other member states. The persistence of these groupings suggests a fragmentation of the EU institutional scene.

Under the assumption that informal groups are types of differentiation in the EU political system, the project aimed to advance our understanding of EU member states’ practices of cooperation in the post-Lisbon EU foreign policy governance. It examined three cases in which informal groups of EU member states cooperated with non-EU actors in international contact groups: Kosovo (i.e Group of Informal Dialogue on the Balkans Quint and Berlin Process for the Western Balkans), Libya (i.e. P3 Format and Berlin Process on Libya) and Syria (i.e. Friends of Syria Group and International Syria Support Group). To address leadership dynamics, the project also aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of the role of Italy, a member state that has strong commercial and political links with these countries and that took part to all the groupings considered.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

To meet the overall goal of the project, documents were collected at the historical archives of the EU, based at the European University Institute (EUI), as well as at various EU and member states’ official online databases and repositories. In parallel, there was a preliminary assessment of the foreign policy actors involved in EU approach to the cases under study (i.e. Kosovo, Libya and Syria), and therefore potentially interested in joining informal groups. To observe how these distinctive patterns of interaction worked in practice, a participant observation took then place at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Policy Planning Unit. In the meantime, a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with EU and member states’ policy makers. These were intended to shed light upon member states’ understanding of these practices and their functioning. A research stay was carried out at the Brussels-based office of the German Institute for International Affairs (SWP), to facilitate the conduct of the interviews and to increase the chances of reaching out to German policy makers and civil society.

Main results:

1) A monograph; three peer-review articles (two of which already published in special issue I co-edited); one book chapter (forthcoming); one EUI/Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) working paper; 2 policy briefs, 2 blog posts and 1 news article. Given the considerable amount of data collected, more journal articles will be based on this research project. While two journal articles are already into preparation, the possibility of proposing another special issue is currently being explored.

2) Co-editorship of a special issue in Contemporary Security Policy on differentiation as a mode of governance in EU foreign policy

3) Organization of 4 panels and participation in international conferences, namely the Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on the European Union (in 2021 and in 2022); the European Union Studies Association Conference (May 2022); and the Conference of the Italian Political Science Association (in September 2022)

4) Presentation of findings at a thematic workshop at Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), at the Robert Schuman Seminar Series and in 2 research groups based at the EUI/RSCAS (i.e. ‘SOLID - Policy Crisis and Crisis Politics. Sovereignty, Solidarity and Identity in the EU Post 2008’ and ‘DICE - Differentiation: Clustering Excellence’)

5) Co-organization of two workshops at the EUI/RSCAS: in October 2021 on ‘Differentiation in EU foreign and security policy’; and in July 2022 on ‘Italy and the war in Ukraine’

6) Dissemination of results to policy makers, civil society, high school and university students

7) Increased research skills via trainings and courses

8) Expansion of professional network across Europe

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project contributed to advancing our understanding of differentiated forms of cooperation in EU foreign policy governance in three main, interrelated ways. First, the project carried out an in-depth examination of the extent to which the types and frequency of informal groups are unique or distinctive when compared to previous phases of European integration in foreign policy. Second, it increased our knowledge of the occurrence of informal groupings outside formal EU mechanisms in EU foreign affairs post-Lisbon. Third, and lastly, it assessed the influence of informal groups on EU foreign policy, unraveled their interaction with EU institutions and the formal EU foreign policy-making procedures, and assessed their implications for the post-Lisbon EU foreign policy governance.

As for the wider society implications, the project cast light on the persistence of informal groups in EU foreign policy post-Lisbon and their interactions with EU policy making processes. Informal groups’ activities generally have externalities also on member states that do not participate in them. This notwithstanding, informal groups lack mechanisms to ensure their accountability. Understanding their emergence, their functioning and their implications contributes to increasing the transparency of EU foreign policy making, while allowing the broader public to receive more information about member states’ involvement in the EU governance and in highly topical policy cases.

Social Network Analysis of Member States' Representatives in EU Foreign Policy