EU Foreign Policy in Times of the Financial and Debt Crisis

In: European foreign affairs review, Volume 19, Issue 2, p. 179-194

Abstract

Since the financial and debt crisis in the Eurozone has become acute in 2010, political and academic attention first and foremost focused on its consequences for the single currency area and for the internal European integration process. In fact, the crisis has not only been a strain on the European integration process but also a central challenge for the EU as an international actor. It led to an erosion of the financial and budgetary basis of foreign policy - even if more pronounced on the national than the European level. It also accelerated a trend towards the economization of political priorities resulting - among other things - in deepening conflicts among EU Member States. These developments have in turn eroded both the effectiveness and the soft power of EU foreign policy. In this difficult environment, reforms of EU foreign policy making are at the same time more urgent and harder to achieve than before the crisis.