European states are involved in a variety of informal groups and alliances, such as the “Quint” composed of France, Germany, Italy the United Kingdom and the United States. Drawing on new research, Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré highlights the important role these groups play in steering EU foreign policy.
Day after day, as the international environment becomes tougher, the demand for EU unity and action becomes greater. While Israel and Hamas show no sign of reaching a ceasefire deal, uncertainty about the outcome of this year’s US presidential election continues to cast a shadow over the continuation of Washington’s support for Ukraine.
Divisions among EU member states regarding the EU’s top priorities persist. To make matters worse, the leaders of the two biggest players in EU foreign policy – France and Germany – have been considerably weakened by recent election results. And, as if the already existing external challenges were not enough, over the next few years the EU will face the arduous task of internally reforming itself to prepare for future enlargement.
Informal groups in EU foreign policy
In a recent study, I argue that in light of these challenges, it is crucial to explore patterns of informal cooperation among member states in EU foreign policy. Informal groups are soft alliances of member state representatives that steer EU foreign policy both within the EU institutional framework and outside of it while remaining loosely connected to it. Although there are many examples of these groups, those operating in the Quint in the Western Balkans, the Normandy Format in Ukraine and the E3/EU+3 format in Iran are perhaps the best known.
These groups are not a recent development in the EU. They have existed at least since the founding of the European Political Cooperation (EPC) in the 1970s. After decades of increasing integration and institutional development in EU foreign policy, however, their persistence now calls into question the success of the European integration process and the functioning of EU foreign policy.
A persistent feature
To examine what characterises these groups and how they have evolved, I conducted a social network analysis of EU foreign policy covering roughly 50 years of European integration. I looked at the frequency and types of informal groups across three phases: the period from the establishment of the European Political Cooperation in the 1970s to the Maastricht Treaty (1993), the period from the Maastricht Treaty to the Lisbon Treaty (2009), and the period from the Lisbon Treaty until 2022.
The European Political Community, the Maastricht Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty are widely understood as being institutional milestones in the gradual integration of EU foreign policy. As such, they should have decreased the occurrence of informal groups in the realm of foreign policy. Yet, I find that these groups have been a persistent and recurrent feature of the European foreign policy integration process.
My findings suggest that European integration and informal groups are not incompatible. Indeed, the opposite is true as the frequency of informal groups has remained stable across the three phases of European integration considered. At the same time, informal groups have generally been relatively small, like-minded and dominated by individual member states.
Informal groups seem to have provided the cooperation needed for the coherent functioning of EU foreign policy by accommodating member states’ interests, especially those that could potentially disrupt cooperation in the EU. An important example is EU foreign policy towards Kosovo, Libya and Syria in the post-Lisbon era, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Informal Groups in EU foreign Policy on Kosovo, Libya and Syria (2009-22)
Source: Compiled by the author.
Informal groups generally included member states with strategic interests in these cases. In the case of Kosovo, for instance, four of the five member states that did not recognise Kosovo’s independence – Spain, Greece, Slovakia and Cyprus – composed one of the groups identified. At the same time, member states’ cooperation through informal groups was evenly distributed across the three cases, notwithstanding their highly divisive nature among member states.
Theoretical and practical implications
While assessing the success of the European integration process, scholars and pundits have mostly focused on whether uniform cooperation among member states has been formalised rather than on whether and how it has taken place in practice. Under the implicit understanding that they reflect absences of integration, they have generally overlooked the occurrence of informal groups.
Rather than being a pathology of the functioning of EU system, however, such groups seem to be a requirement for its survival. Indeed, my findings suggest that informal groups have become consolidated as crucial arrangements for achieving and maintaining high levels of cooperation among states in EU foreign policy, despite member states’ diverging interests.
This has important implications. At the theoretical level, we may need to refine our understanding of European integration as a formalisation of member states’ uniform integration. At the practical level, there is a need to reconsider the construction of the EU’s institutions. If informal groups are not channelled through institutional mechanisms, they could lead to uncoordinated patterns of cooperation and thus an inefficient EU foreign policy. They could also damage the already limited accountability of EU foreign policy decisions.
Finding the right equilibrium will be crucial for the EU in a global system plagued by serious security issues and where its activities face widespread opposition from populist politicians and voters. Achieving such an equilibrium will require a nuanced understanding of the role played by informal groups – an understanding that goes beyond dichotomous evaluations of their significance for the functioning of EU foreign policy.
For more information, see the author’s accompanying paper in the Journal of European Public Policy
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: European Union
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