The Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Ukrainian Crisis

Abstract

Teiborlang T. Kharsyntiew argues that the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 represented an existential challenge to EU foreign policy-making. The Common and Foreign and Security Policy is an ambitious goal of the EU; it has sought to portray the EU as an international actor that can act and speak with one voice on the international stage. However, such ambitions are challenged by the complexities of foreign policy-making processes that exist both within the EU and at the national level in member states. The Ukrainian crisis represents this complexity. When the EU’s and its member states’ foreign policy objectives are not in harmony, domestic priorities come before the EU’s, thus rendering the EU’s foreign policy subservient to member states’ approaches.