Internal Differentiated Integration in EU - The Cases of Libya and Syria

My article addresses the causes, patterns and effects of internal, informal differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union (EU) foreign policy governance. While in the post-Lisbon era the EU faced a series of crises that put under severe test its existing paradigms, assessing the past decade of EU foreign policy, which finds its roots in EU member states’ core state powers, can help us evaluate scenarios on the future of the EU. Ten years after the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty (December 2009, LT), the institutional modifications it introduced are now consolidated and have been well-tested in the field. After decades of progressive centralization among member states, the LT sought to further streamline the complexity of the EU foreign policy machinery, particularly through the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission (HR/VP) and the European External Action Service (EEAS). And yet, on several occasions, informal groups of EU member states cooperated with non-EU actors (i.e. states and organizations) within larger international contact groups, taking decisions that affected other member states without their participation. The existence of informal groupings of member states steering EU responses to external conflicts and crises reflects the extent of internal DI in EU foreign policy despite the centralization envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty. What informal groups exist in foreign affairs post-Lisbon? Under what conditions do informal groups occur in foreign affairs post-Lisbon? To what extent do these groups influence EU foreign policy post-Lisbon and how? What are the implications of informal groups for the post-Lisbon EU foreign policy governance and for the EU institutional development? I will answer these questions by examining internal, informal DI in the cases of Libya and Syria