Taking Flight or Crashing Down? European Common Foreign Policy and International Crises

Abstract

What was the level of commonality in European foreign policy for recent international crises? This article assesses the level of commonality by conducting a chronological comparative content analysis to bring to light the rhetoric of European powers (United Kingdom, France and Germany) and EU actors. It focuses on the crises between Russia and Georgia in 2008 and the civil war in Libya of 2011. The article argues that states often converged in their positioning on a wide range of issues, even in moments of crisis. However, it also reveals that they remain in control of the timing of their statements and that EU actors were weak. This paper puts forth a novel tool to assess European foreign policy in times of crisis, it provides empirical data on the subject and highlights the importance of different types of issues in the assessment of commonality.