Institutional innovation of EU’s foreign and security policy : big leap for EU’s strategic actorness or much ADO about nothing?

Abstract

The analysis takes stock of the recent institutional developments within European Union’s foreign and security policy and examines to what extent the Union has managed to overcome some of the substantial hinders in the way for its evolvement into a strategic actor. The paper scrutinizes the impact of the recent dynamics within EU’s foreign and security policy on Union’s strategic actorness within three benchmarks: (1) the capacity to extract resources from various EU’s foreign and security stakeholders, (2) the ability to relate these resources to EU’s objectives and to express them within a general strategic narrative, and (3) the implementation of the strategy in the light of changes in the global arena. The article shows that these three benchmarks have been advanced and now it is up to the Member States to engage with it and to make the leap towards a strategic actor possible.