Differentiation in EU’s foreign and security policy

Organised by

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• GGP: Global Governance Programme
• EGPP: European Governance and Politics Programme

In the last decade, due to both institutional developments and external pressures resulting from the growing unpredictability of the EU’s security environment, EU’s foreign policy practices have grown increasingly complex. Among other institutional practices, instances of both internal and external differentiation have increased. Scholarly attention has focused on the value – or lack thereof – of differentiation for the coherence of the EU’s foreign and security policy, as well on the various forms that differentiated integration (DI) can take in this policy field (e.g. Permanent Structured Cooperation). Yet, despite the growing debate on DI in EU’s foreign and security policy, there is a general lack of scholarly work offering convincing theoretical explanation underpinned by empirical data. Additionally, existing literature generally overlooks the reasons why the existing Treaty-based mechanisms that can enable differentiation in this policy sector, such as constructive abstention, have hardly been used. Against this backdrop, the aim of the workshop is to advance the scholarly debate, and to grasp the complexity of differentiation in EU’s foreign and security policy by providing a more comprehensive understanding of this increasingly important phenomenon, its underlying logic, manifestations, and the consequences for the coherence of this policy area.

Attachments:

• Programme