How Does the European Commission Influence EU Foreign Policy?

How can we conceptualize and empirically study the influence that the Commission has on the emergence and evolution of a European foreign policy? This paper offers an analytical framework to study how the European Commission influences European Union (EU) foreign policy. Formally, the Commission has only limited or no competence in this area. Yet recent studies have shown that the Commission’s influence on EU foreign policy decision-making processes is substantial, both in Brussels and in international forums. This development has important theoretical implications: it challenges the conventional perspective that foreign policy is the outcome of negotiations between national officials. How the Commission influences EU foreign policy has not, however, been systematically studied to allow for generalisation. This paper develops four main hypotheses of how the Commission may exert influence on the member states positions and thus the common EU foreign policies agreed on. The bargaining hypothesis suggests that the Commission can influence on the agreement outcome either; by allying itself with the most powerful member states, or; by leveraging EU law as part of its bargaining tactic. The institutional circumvention hypothesis suggests that the Commission may influence EU foreign policy by exploiting the unique institutional structure of the EU system to ‘circumvent’ and ‘tie the opposing member states’ hands’ through direct cooperation with national bureaucracies. The rhetorical entrapment hypothesis suggests that the Commission can successfully influence EU foreign policy if it sets up a ‘rhetorical entrapment’ by casting, or framing, its position as upholding existing exemplary norms, rules, or earlier experiences. The argument-based learning hypothesis suggests that the Commission may influence policies through presenting justifications based on its (bureaucratic) expertise, facts, EU laws and common norms.