Setting the CFSP agenda: between cooperation, co-optation and contestation

Thirty years after the first formulation of CFSP, the number and type of actors shaping the CFSP agenda have evolved considerably – especially following the establishment of the EEAS and the expansion of the High Representative’s powers to include CFSP agenda-setting. These progressive changes call for an investigation of the ways in which member states and EU-level actors – from the HRVP and the EEAS to the Commission – have come to interact when setting the CFSP agenda. Even though contestation remains part and parcel of EU foreign policy cooperation, member states and EU-level actors interact in more ways than one. While at times capitals and EU institutions cooperate with the Service and the HRVP to shape the CFSP/CSDP agenda, member states also co-opt the EEAS to secure their own interests (for instance, by appointing national officials to strategic positions within the Service) or openly contest the EEAS as too proactive – or not proactive enough – an agenda-setter. The goal of this paper is to establish under what conditions we should expect to see cooperation, contestation or co-optation in CFSP agenda-setting. Relying on a wide array of empirical material, including semi-structured elite interviews and COREU data, the article investigates several CFSP/CSPD negotiations that have taken place since the beginning of HRVP Borrell’s term, from the renewal of EUNAVFOR MED Irini to the sanctions against Belarus. In examining the dynamics at play in CFSP agenda-setting, the paper makes a number of important contributions. For one, it adds to the literature exploring the influence that member states and EU-level actors exert on CFSP agenda-setting (e.g. Riddervold and Trondal 2020, Aggestam and Bicchi 2019, Vanhoonacker and Pomorska 2013). Moreover, by investigating the dynamics at play between capitals and EU institutions, the paper contributes to ongoing debates between intergovernmentalists and supranationalists on the nature of EU foreign policy (e.g. Haroche 2020, Bergmann 2019, Bickerton et al. 2015, Fabbrini and Puetter 2014).