14 March, 2024 | Andreas Eisl and Eulalia Rubio
DO CRISES REINFORCE THE EU’s GLOBAL ACTORNESS?
Over the course of the last decade, the European Union has been hit by a panoply of crises in a context of major geopolitical and geoeconomic transformations. The EU has come under increasing pressure, as tensions between and competition with China and the USA have increased, and as Russia has unleashed military and economic warfare on the European continent. The rules-based multilateral order, championed by the EU for decades, is being gradually replaced by global power politics. In such a world, individual EU member states (even larger ones such as Germany and France) will likely fail to defend, on their own, their interests and values. Instead, it seems necessary for the EU to become a stronger international actor.
In our REGROUP research paper “Will Europe be forged in crises? Analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 and Ukraine crises on EU actorness” we tackle this issue by studying how recent crises have affected EU actorness, defined as the Union’s capacity to defend its interests and values at the global level. To analyse the effects of crises, we focus on the Covid-19 crisis and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and zoom in on four policy initiatives that were set up to respond to these crises in the areas of health, energy and development cooperation, namely joint vaccine procurement, joint gas purchases and the COVAX and FARM initiatives.
THE (NON-)DEVELOPMENT OF EU ACTORNESS IN FOUR CASES
The successful development and procurement of vaccines was seen as a key solution to the Covid-19 crisis in Europe. To this end the EU set up a new procurement model based on so-called Advance Purchase Agreements. This new instrument proved successful, allowing the EU to support the development and procure a broad set of different vaccine candidates at comparatively cheap prices. Based on the lessons of the crisis response, the EU also developed a new framework for the supply of crisis-relevant medical countermeasures to prepare for future public health emergencies. In this case, EU actorness increased significantly.
The Covid-19 crisis also prompted the Union to take a leadership role in vaccine cooperation. The Commission joined international actors to set up COVAX, a novel mechanism to provide vaccines to less developed countries. To address the global pandemic impacts more effectively, the EU also adopted a ‘Team Europe’ approach, pooling development aid from different EU institutions and countries. However, inconsistencies between EU development goals and other EU interests – particularly securing access to vaccines to the EU population – as well as the Union´s inability to counteract international ‘vaccine diplomacy’ undermined the effectiveness of COVAX. Overall, unlike what happened with vaccine procurement, EU actorness increased only moderately in this case.
Turning to the Ukraine crisis, when gas prices exploded in 2022 following the Russian invasion, joint gas purchases were considered a key instrument to ensure security of supply and achieve affordable prices. The Commission proposed a joint gas procurement mechanism modelled on the vaccine approach. However, AggregateEU, the instrument finally agreed upon after lengthy negotiations, fell significantly short of the initial ambitions, merely providing a platform for potential common purchases between gas undertakings and key consumers. EU actorness did not develop to any significant extent in this case.
Finally, to address the upheavals on global food markets resulting from the Ukraine war, the EU launched the FARM initiative. Proposed by France, the objective of FARM was to coordinate the provision of development aid to food-dependent countries, stabilise global food markets by increasing grain production and imposing bans on food export restrictions. But despite EU efforts to develop a ‘Team Europe’ approach again, it was unable to achieve its objectives due to tensions between FARM and another German-led initiative and the absence of effective coordination between global key players. As a result, we conclude that EU actorness did not strengthen in this case.
CRISIS AND EU ACTORNESS
As highlighted by our four cases, crises do not automatically lead to an increase in EU actorness. Our analysis shows, however, that a key explanatory factor for the development of EU actorness is the existence of a strong level of internal EU cohesion, meaning a strong alignment in interests and preferences among member states. The extent of cohesion, in turn, is strongly influenced by different types of crises. In the case of joint vaccine procurement, the symmetric impact of the pandemic reinforced the Union’s internal cohesion, favouring joint action. In the case of joint gas purchases, the asymmetric impact of the Ukraine war accentuated intra-EU differences, rendering the development of joint action more difficult.
The cases also show that a lack of consistency between different EU policies or objectives may hamper EU actorness in response to a crisis. In the case of COVAX, tensions between addressing the internal and external effects of the crisis limited the EU’s role in vaccine cooperation. Furthermore, both in the case of COVAX and FARM, the EU was unable to ensure coherence between actions in the fields of development aid and trade.
Finally, and notably, our analysis shows that the formal distribution of competences between the EU and the national level matters little in times of crisis. In such situations, the EU can make use of existing emergency clauses, such as the Treaties’ ‘solidarity clause’, to set up new instruments. The existence of comparatively strong EU competences, e.g. in the field of development cooperation, were not a sufficient condition to guarantee a strengthening of EU actorness to address the effects of crises on less-developed countries.
This article highlights some of the findings in the REGROUP paper “Will Europe be forged in crises? Analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 and Ukraine crises on EU actorness”.
