EU Foreign Policy and the High Representative’s Capability-Expectations Gap: A question of Political Will

Abstract

Once again the European Union (EU) foreign policy is characterized by a capability-expectations gap: the expectations towards the redesigned High Representative of the Union (HR) are high, with the hope of a single voice representative being able to shape and align the positions of the Member States and EU institutions. By contrast, the actual capabilities of the new post are limited, as it is confronted with the prerogatives of the European Commission in the field of integrated aspects of external action, while the framework of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) remains intergovernmental. Hence, reducing the capability-expectations gap is now mainly a matter of Member States' political will to use the potential of institutional innovation. To that end, co-leadership of the HR with Member States, the European Commission and the European Parliament is needed to provide new momentum to the common foreign policy project. This argument is developed using three cases that exemplify the dynamics in the new EU foreign policy architecture: the setup of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the immediate reaction to the crisis in Libya and strategic thinking. Based on the findings, conditions and measures to overcome the capability-expectations gap are discussed.