Beyond Resilience: The European Union's Self-Perception Explained by its Global Strategy

In 2008, the "golden window of opportunity" of EU foreign policy ended abruptly, as the so-called polycrisis began with the financial crisis. In the following years Europe's focus significantly shifted inwards and foreign as well as security policy once again became a strict prerogative of the member states. This, together with the weak first HR Catherine Ashton, meant that the European Union hardly played a role in the following crises in world politics. Her successor, Federica Mogherini, in turn put more effort into the development of European foreign policy. By formulating the Global Strategy, she underscored her ambitions to strengthen EU foreign policy as well as the ambitions of the EU itself to once again play a more important role in world politics. Mogherini adapted the security strategy of the EU to its current challenges and international circumstances. In addition to the impending Brexit, the Global Strategy also formed the starting point for further foreign policy initiatives, such as the new military headquarters of the EU, PESCO or the European Intervention Initiative. The timing of the Global Strategy’s development seemed unfavorable at first, as the EU had not fully recovered from the euro crisis and the refugee crisis hit the whole Union. In addition, the EU-critical PiS party won the Polish parliamentary elections, making the country the EU’s second problem child alongside Hungary. Therefore, the year 2015 was characterized by internal crises, making an ambitious foreign policy strategy at least questionable. But the HR presented a concept that was no longer inspired by romantic notions of democratization, but takes a more realistic approach on the international capabilities of the EU and that at the same time is marked by the crises of the past years. This is why special attention was given to the term “resilience”, which is one of the building blocks of the Global Strategy and that should be strengthened both within the EU as well as in its immediate neighborhood. But the Global Strategy is more than just resilience. It reflects the current self-perception of the European Union as an international actor, shows what role it wants to play in world politics, and what its international goals are. The strategy also sheds light on how the EU pictures its neighborhood and the international situation as a whole, which sphere of influence is of particular importance, and with which partners it intends to step up its cooperation. To illustrate this complexity, the proposed paper will use qualitative content analysis in order to determine categories that identify the above mentioned aspects as well as possible others. The analysis will be complemented by further steps, such as the development of the European Union's self-perception since the first Security Strategy or the context of the emergence of the Global Strategy. Such an in-depth analysis of the Global Strategy is still lacking in the research literature available to date, which has so far focused primarily on the genesis of the strategy, its impact on EU foreign policy, and the notion of resilience.