in the second chapter of our book we provide a historical analysis of the foreign policy of the European Union and of the relationship between European integration and foreign policy in this short video we will provide five major findings of that historical analysis first of all European integration is foreign policy European integration is the result of foreign policy of the United States and of European countries that have launched European integration after the second World War do initiatives are crucial here first the Marshall Plan of 1947 which was launched by the United States and which also included
the former enemy Western Germany and secondly the European coal and Steel Community of 1952 which transferred National control over two essential economic sectors go and steal to the supranational European level and also today European integration is still an instrument of foreign policy of the EU member states in order to manage their Mutual relations indeed European integration is still used by member states as a foreign policy tool to influence other member states that's for instance feasible in what certain member states want to do via European integration by info in order to influence internal developments in Poland
or Hungary these days more in particular is the results and actual foreign policy a concept that we have introduced in the first video structural foreign policy aims to change the rules of the game that determine the interaction between European countries a second finding is related to the Paradox that European integration is foreign policy but that foreign policy towards other parts of the world and particularly security defense policy were for long time with Taboo in European integration European institutions did not get the competences to develop these policies and foreign policy was not discussed for decades and
that was from the perspective of the member states also logical because form and security and defense policy were covered either by NATO and by the member states themselves and it's only gradually that foreign policy was included first in the 70s and the 80s through the European political cooperation with the focus on cooperation between member states foreign policy and in 1991 domestic treaty established the cfsp or the common foreign security policy but this was launched without iron institutions actors budgets instruments which obviously had to lead to what was labeled the capability expectation Gap and it's only
in the last 20 years that cfsp was supported by new actors the high representative and the external Action Service and by new instruments such as the ability to develop and conduct civilian and Military crisis management operations however two crucial features remain first of all member states do not want and did not want that the EU would completely take over their foreign policies and secondly how security or territorial military security remains largely excluded and we have to take that into account when assessing you foreign policy because this implies we can't expect everything from the up Union's
foreign policy and this refers to one of the features that we discussed in the first chapter of the book that is the EU foreign policy is not all encompassing a third finding of this chapter is that although European integration was initially not intended to include a foreign policy component the wrong Treaty of 1957 generated two sources of power that had major foreign policy relevance and major foreign policy implications a first one was the common commercial policy external trade policy as the result of the Customs Union and the second one was the eec's ability to conclude
International agreements these initial external competences which were rooted in an economic or a market rationale allowed the eec to take its first steps as an international actor as they defacto forced the eec to Define its relations with the rest of the world and thus to think in terms of foreign policy these powers and formal competences related to traits and to International agreements provided leverage carrots and sticks that can be used in foreign policy more broadly and that are still relevant for EU foreign policy today and this leads to a fault finding which is related to
the widening scope and reach and intensity of informed policy the EU now has a foreign policy towards nearly every country and region in the world albeit with Verizon degrees of comprehensiveness and whereas the focus was initially indeed manual trade and development now the U has a cfsp has a csdp also different dimensions of the use external action are com are added and there's an increasingly important external dimension of internal policies plus you know also more and more has an operational foreign policy and not just a declaration foreign policy implying that more and more there's not
only not only there are words but also action and despite a range of failures in uniform policy we also have a number of major achievements in any case we have the enlargement process towards Central and Eastern Europe where you contribute to the stability MPS in the region do you also played a major role in some important International negotiations for instance on the Iranian nuclear capabilities and after the Russian invasion in Ukraine the EU managed to develop a rather comprehensive policy towards Ukraine together with its member states and it also managed to agree on a set
of sanctions against Russia and when final finding the EU has been very successful in finding an answer to the question on how to deal with the former enemy with Germany and how to integrate Germany in a common institutional setup and to avoid that Germany would feel frustrated or marginalized however the EU has failed in the 1990s and early 2000s to incorporate in one way or another to other major powers in its neighborhoods Russia and Turkey in Russia there were calls for a Europe from the Atlantic to the Euro or from Lisbon to Vladivostok and the
EU has never been able to provide a serious answer turkey has formerly been a candidate member States since 1999 an accession negotiation started in 2005 but this relationship became very problematic for a variety of reasons of course the EU is not the only actor to blame for this but these failures remain indeed major failures of EU foreign policy with consequences until now as the EU is now indirectly at war with Russia and turkey is distancing itself more and more from the EU and the West while it is becoming an increasingly important geostrategic competitor for the
EU
