(Not) in the Hands of the Member States: How the European Commission Influences EU Security and Defence Policies

Abstract

The European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is run using special procedures. The Member States have not delegated powers to the supranational institutions. Yet a number of studies challenge the assumption that policy-making lies exclusively with Member States' governments. The Commission's putative influence within the CFSP, however, remains to be studied systematically from an analytical perspective. Aiming to fill this gap in the literature, this article asks how the Commission de facto influences EU foreign and security policies beyond its delegated powers. Two least likely cases are analysed: the launch of EU naval mission Atalanta and the adoption of an EU Maritime Security Strategy. By adressing this question, the article contributes to a better understanding of the level of EU foreign policy integration. It also adds knowledge on the possible causes of this development, and thus to the EU integration literature more generally.

Neofunctionalism and EU external policy integration: the case of capacity building in support of security and development (CBSD)

“…Second, there is an ongoing debate on the creeping influence of supranational actors in EU foreign and security policy. Despite member states' strong reluctance to transfer decision-making competences in foreign and security affairs to the European level, recent studies show that supranational actors such as the European Commission, the European Parliament or the European Court of Justice have played an increasingly important role in CFSP/CSDP policy-making, taking it beyond intergovernmental cooperation (Blauberger and Weiss 2013;Riddervold 2016;Rosén and Raube 2018).…”

From Neo‐Functional Peace to a Logic of Spillover in EU External Policy: A Response to Visoka and Doyle

“…This can be witnessed across the various external policy domains: external trade policy (da Conceicão‐Heldt ; Delreux ; Elsig, 2007), development policy (Carbone ; Grilli , pp. 90, 98), external migration policy (Bürgin ; Trauner and Manigrassi ), enlargement and neighbourhood policy (Jones and Clark ; Macmillan ), external environmental and energy policy (Mayer ; Renner ; Rietig ), and even to some extent in the EU's security and defence policy (Krause ; Riddervold ).…”

What Type of Power has the EU Exercised in the Ukraine–Russia Crisis? A Framework of Analysis

“…A number of scholars have researched the role of working groups and committees within the Council that take on a life of their own in terms of influencing foreign policy beyond what we might expect from Member States alone (Cross, ; Duke, ; Howorth, ; Juncos and Pomorska, ; Juncos and Reynolds, ; Lewis, ). Others have argued that supranational institutions, such as the Commission, are gradually taking on a stronger role in foreign and security policy (Riddervold, ). And since the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, scholars have shown a similar interest in the internal workings of the European External Action Service (Bátora, ; Juncos and Pomorska, ).…”