STRATEGIC AUTONOMY OF THE EU: A HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONALIST ANALYSIS

Kılıç S.

UACES 52. ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Lille, Fransa, 5 - 08 Eylül 2022, ss.1

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Yayınlanmadı
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Lille
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Fransa
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1
  • Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

In June 2016, Federica Mogherini, then-High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, presented the Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy and introduced the ambition of “strategic autonomy” referring to the ability to deter, respond to, and protect the Union against external threats autonomously. Although, realizing these grandiose aims requires high-end operational capabilities and capacities, the mechanisms that the EU has since operationalized seem far from serving the aim. The EU, in fact, prioritizes the industrial aspect of this ambition, and the mechanisms such as the European Defence Fund (EDF) and its forerunner the Preparatory Action on Defence Research are depicted as “game-changers”. In this sense, the EU seems to tilt towards a pragmatic way, meaning that the EU prioritizes what proves achievable under the current conditions. In the light of these developments and arguments, this study aims to analyse whether the EU pursues this pragmatic approach in handling the notion of strategic autonomy and whether this can be explained with endogenous factors, particularly the path-dependency of the institution. In pursuit of this aim, the study borrows from historical institutionalism as the theoretical framework and scrutinizes the official documents and discourse from a historical perspective. The analysis is supported by the primary data from the interviews conducted with the EU officials. The study concludes that the EU clearly pursues a pragmatic approach, as in the case of its prudent balance between the Europeanist vs. Atlanticist division, and therefore prioritizes what is achievable for the realization of strategic autonomy, that is moving on with the supranational mechanisms and keeping with the low-profile consensus due to member states divergences. The analysis of the EDF as a case study shows that the path-dependency of the Commission shapes this pragmatism considerably.