From a normalisation of the CFSP to a normalisation of adhocism: EU foreign policy actorness beyond the institutional machinery

Centred on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and its institutional aspects, most European Union (EU) scholars have scrutinized treaty-based flexibility mechanisms introduced since the Maastricht treaty as solutions to overcome stalemate and contribute to a stronger EU foreign policy actorness. Against this backdrop, the disruption of the European security order with Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine since 2022 has revigorated the debate on a “normalisation” of the CFSP, notably in favour of an extension of the application of Qualified Majority Voting. In this same context however, while witnessing unprecedented EU institutions centrality, the EU foreign policy response to the war has increasingly manifested outside of the formal CFSP framework, through informal, ad hoc arrangements. Drawing insights from the EU’s response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict before and after the full-scale invasion through the ‘Normandy’ and ‘Coalition of the Willing’ initiatives, this paper proposes to move beyond the focus on the CFSP, by examining instead the normalisation of adhocism and its contribution to a stronger EU foreign policy actorness.