Practising EU Foreign Policy

Abstract

This book is a novel contribution to practice theory in International Relations, focusing on how EU practitioners approach the Union’s foreign policy to its eastern neighbourhood, including Russia, from a poststructuralist perspective. It offers a new methodology to capture practices through the analytical approach of Discursive International Relations and the Discursive Practice Model (DPM). DPM focuses on the micro-interactional features of practitioners’ social actions, agency and rhetorical devices, exploring what practitioners accomplish with them and how they relate this back to foreign policy practices. Drawing from data gathered at the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament’s AFET committee members, the study concludes that practitioners are concerned with the collective EU identity and how Russia and the eastern neighbours fit within this ‘Europeaness’. But they are equally concerned with normative and moral duties and collective security interests. This suggest that practitioners are a lot more pragmatic when it comes to this policy area then previously assumed by the vast literature on normative power in Europe. This pragmatism does not mean that identity, normative and moral concerns do not matter, but rather that they all interplay when practitioner consider this policy area. Moreover, practitioners ought to be cautious of using moral concerns when considering the eastern neighbours as they jeopardise being seen as a moralising power, rather than a moral authority in the region. The current Ukrainian crises are testament to that.