EU foreign policy RIP

Matthew Karnitschnig is POLITICO’s chief Europe correspondent.

European foreign policy died in Moscow last week. The burial will be held at sea this spring, some 35 fathoms under the Baltic, where a towering Russian vessel called “Fortuna” is laying the final section of the 1,230 kilometer-long Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. 

While the end of Europe’s geopolitical ambitions was long in coming, the coup de grâce was a jaw-dropper, if only because it was self-inflicted.

In what is being called “the humiliation” in Europe’s capitals, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stood silent in Moscow last Friday as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the EU as an “unreliable partner” during a joint appearance on live television. The only response Borrell managed to muster to Lavrov’s lengthy diatribe was a pained grin. 

Back in the Brussels bubble, European parliamentarians reacted with outrage and calls for Borrell’s resignation. Belgian MEP Assita Kanko even asked Borrell, a Spaniard, what had happened to the EU’s cojones.

By asking the question, she unwittingly exposed the EU’s dirty little secret: It has none. 

The EU has always worked best when it sticks to what it knows, like regulation, trade and doling out subsidies across the bloc. High-stakes diplomacy has never been and — as Borrell proved — never will be the EU’s strong suit for the simple reason that there is no consensus within the 27-member bloc on foreign policy. 

Whether the issue is Russia or Turkey, China or even the U.S., negotiating a coherent position within the EU is next to impossible; not for reasons of party ideology, but because national interests often diverge.

Borrell’s real crime was to let the mask drop on the EU’s powerlessness. Critics had been saying for weeks that he shouldn’t make the trip, especially on the heels of the Kremlin’s imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and its crackdown on protesters. The Russians would use the trip for their own propaganda, they warned. Borrell went anyway, making tired arguments about the merits of “dialogue” with adversaries. 

What made the Spaniard such an easy mark for Lavrov was that he had no leverage to force Russia’s hand. Even if the EU had an army or the much-ballyhooed “strategic autonomy” to which many in Brussels aspire, it would be paralyzed by the process of agreeing what to do when faced with a challenge like Russia.

The only tool the EU has to “punish” Russia is sanctions, which so far have had virtually no effect on Moscow’s malevolent behavior. (Wealthy Russians have largely succeeded in circumventing the restrictions by buying European passports from Cyprus and Malta.)

It hasn’t helped matters that the effort to box Russia in has been consistently undermined by the EU’s biggest member, Germany. 

Berlin’s tendency to look the other way in the face of Russian provocations is well documented. In recent years, the greatest example of that blind spot has been the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Many EU countries, not to mention the U.S., oppose the project for a variety of reasons, including that it will rob Eastern Europe of billions in transit fees that Russia now pays to deliver gas to the Continent.  

Berlin has steadfastly refused to use its participation in the project as leverage against Moscow, where (as everywhere else but Germany) it is viewed as a key strategic initiative. Over the years, Nord Stream 2 has survived an illegal annexation, multiple poisonings, at least one assassination as well as attempts to undermine Western democracy too numerous to cite. 

The Russian-German deal is so dear to Berlin, however, that the German government quietly offered to spend €1 billion last year to secure an American guarantee not to impose sanctions on the project. 

Earlier this week, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered a novel explanation for Germany’s devotion to the pipeline. 

“More than 20 million people in the former Soviet Union died in the war,” he said in a newspaper interview. “That doesn’t excuse bad behavior in Russian politics today, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the big picture.” 

The remarks didn’t go down well with some of Germany’s neighbors. 

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Germany of going “behind the back of Europe,” calling Nord Stream 2 an “anti-Union project that could soon serve Russia’s aggressive politics.” 

“It’s time to stop it,” he concluded. 

Just how Borrell, or anyone else in his position, could hope to conjure a “European” position out of such a morass isn’t clear.  

European federalists argue that the way out of such a situation is for the EU to drop a requirement for unanimity in foreign policy decision-making in favor of “qualified majority voting.” 

Yet that would only deepen divisions. Imagine, for argument’s sake, that a majority of EU members decided to pursue a rapprochement with Russia against the wishes of the Baltic states and Poland. Or consider what would happen if a qualified majority wanted to side with Turkey in its dispute with Greece and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. 

EU cohesion, such as it is, would be destroyed.

Borrell’s position as “High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy” is a fairly recent innovation. Like Borrell, his two predecessors in the role, Catherine Ashton and Federica Mogherini, struggled to formulate a coherent EU foreign policy against the agendas of national capitals. 

The grand title notwithstanding, the office commands little authority and, as Borrell discovered during his hapless visit to Moscow, even less respect. 

At the end of the day, most EU members are content to maintain the comfortable postwar arrangement of relying on the U.S. for security and their own governments for foreign policy. 

If Brussels wants to be taken seriously, it should embrace the death of its foreign policy ambitions and move on.