This panel looks at the current challenges to the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Union’s responses. It deals with the Russia’s aggression on Ukraine and the EU’s reaction, discussing whether the Union had a collective responsibility to act. It also looks at the EU’s actions through a lens of horizontal Europeanisation, paying special attention to coordination between the member states and the EU institutions, and the potential changes in power balance among the member states. The panellists also check whether there were any lessons learnt from the response to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent events. Another challenge to European foreign policy has come from across the Atlantic. In this vein, the panel assesses the issue of contestation and change in the EU-US relations during Trump and Biden administration and discusses the potential implications of 2024 elections. Finally, the panel addresses the EU’s increasing focus on geopolitics and the idea of the geostrategic union. By bringing the papers together, we hope to start a discussion about the way in which the EU needs to transform itself and which conditions need to be met for it to happen.

The EU’s foreign and security policy has long been resistant to quick and substantial changes, even in the face of security challenges in its own neighbourhood. Where changes were introduced after a crisis, these were mostly incremental and relied on ‘constructive ambiguity’. Even though the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, and the downing of MH17 boosted trust among the member states, it did not produce any fundamental change in EU foreign policy towards Russia. Member states were able to learn from the crisis, but this learning only represented an instance of single loop learning. The result was a shallow Europeanisation of member state policies towards Russia and an uneven institutionalisation of the crisis-induced lessons at the EU level. Against this background, the existential threat posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has resulted in a much swifter and robust response. In this paper, we analyse the short-term response to the war through the lens of horizontal Europeanisation, focusing on the case of EU sanctions against Russia and the use of the European Peace Facility. We first look at the innovative way in which the EU handled the initial response to the war and the role EU institutions played in coordinating a collective response. Drawing on qualitative interviews and documentary analysis, we investigate interactions between member states and EU institutions to determine whether institutional roles have been expanded in a formal or informal manner. We also assess how much of that response has already been institutionalized and whether the process of decision-making has become more consensual as a result.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has upended Europe’s security order, with many observers calling it a turning point for the EU. This article contends, however, that the EU´s response has been less a turning point and more of an epiphany, providing a reality check for the EU and its member states about how far European foreign policy cooperation has evolved in recent decades. It suggests that an understanding of the EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine requires consideration of the over a half a century intensified foreign policy co-operation and its underpinning norm which we term a “collective European responsibility to act”. In emphasising this norm, we identify core ideas about the functioning of collective European foreign policy. We re-examine three key preoccupations of the EU foreign policy-making policy practice and assessment through the lens of the collective European responsibility to act and show how it enables a different and novel re-reading of the added value of EU foreign policy cooperation. The EU response to Russia´s invasion of Ukraine thus serves as a timely focusing event that demands a rethink of the premises that have underpinned our analysis and understanding of collective European foreign policymaking over decades.

This paper addresses issues of contestation and continuity in EU-US relations, with particular attention to the effects of domestic political and policy change in the US and the resulting challenges for CFSP. Building on previous work about contestation and crisis in EU-US relations more generally, it examines the changing position of the EU in US foreign policy in light both of direct domestic pressures (isolationism/internationalism, the domestic politics of economy and security) and the shifting nature of US attention to changes at the global level (focus on China and the Indo-Pacific, on European order and on the feasibility and desirability of global governance). The paper explores the impact of the Trump Administration between 2017-2021 and of the Biden Administration from 2021 onwards, and argues that elements of continuity are at least as important as elements of change and contestation in shaping US perceptions of the EU and its role(s). In this context, it assesses the prospects for significant change or disruption as a result of the 2024 Presidential campaign and election, and the potential implications for CFSP.