The paradoxes of a value-based EU foreign policy
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a paradox is a situation that has two opposite features and therefore seems strange. A value-based foreign policy is arguably a paradoxical one. We can illustrate this point with the example of EU democracy assistance in Tunisia. From 2011, the EU spent around 2 billion euros in grants to promote democracy and human rights in the country. On the one hand, according to the Freedom House Index, between 2018 and 2020, the EU supported democratic promotion programmes in a country that was more democratic (free) than one of its member states, Hungary (partially free). On the other hand, during that time, the EU was spending millions to curtail the rights of migrants and refugees in the Central Mediterranean. In addition, after the self-coup of Kais Saied in 2021, the EU has been ramping up cooperation with Tunisia in migration control, resignifying the 'more for more' approach used after the Arab uprisings to support democratising countries in the region.
Ian Manners' article Normative power Europe: A contradiction in terms?, a cornerstone in the scholarly analysis of EU foreign policy, has been widely criticised for overlooking these paradoxes. One could argue that the context in which his article was published was different. In 2002, democracies outnumbered autocracies worldwide, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court had just entered into force. However, the concept is not as naïve as it might seem. In 2002, the paradoxes of EU foreign policy were as vivid as they are now. The Global War on Terror had already begun and the invasion of Iraq was imminent -with the support and direct participation of several member states-, and the Dublin Regulations, which laid the foundation for Fortress Europe, were incorporated into the EU legal framework in 2003.
Subtly, the concept does address the paradoxes of a value-based foreign policy, thus ‘the contradiction in terms’ in the title. The first dimension of normative power Europe, the most criticised, is descriptive and focuses on identifying the uniqueness of EU foreign policy in the values of the treaties, which are the guiding principles of external action. The second dimension is prescriptive and outlines what EU foreign policy ought to be, providing a roadmap for policymakers. Interestingly, the gap between prescription and description opens the possibility of paradox and strangeness, allowing us to critically compare the norm (the expected behaviour following EU values) with actual foreign policy.
Since the publication of the article, scholars have not ceased to position themselves in relation to Ian Manners’ concept and the gap it identifies. For some, paradoxes in EU foreign policy are seen as occasional deviations from the norm. The EU typically strives to uphold its values, yet inconsistencies and coordination issues between institutions can lead to situations where its actions do not align perfectly with its stated ideals. The severity of the discrepancy between description and prescription can vary in scholarly judgement. Nevertheless, this literature does not question the normative character of EU foreign policy, but rather to what extent political actors live up to its expectations.
Others have engaged with the gap between description and prescription, departing from a different ontology about what the EU is as a power. From this perspective, paradoxes in EU foreign policy are not exceptions but rather the norm. The EU is viewed as a ‘normal power’, characterised by a foreign policy that, like all others, is normative and is shaped by mutually constitutive values and interests. However, from this perspective, despite the disagreement over the nature of political power, the EU's defence of democracy and multilateralism, its role in the climate change regime, and its efforts to abolish the death penalty led to a conclusion similar to Ian Manners': the EU as a beacon of freedoms or a ‘force for good’.
Finally, critics of the concept have argued that EU values are merely a façade. As a post-colonial project, the EU must justify its continued intervention in the Global South with a renewed discourse toolkit, one centred on democracy and human rights, which is the basis of a ‘normative Empire Europe’. According to Raffaella A. Del Sarto, like other imperial projects in history, the EU is a Janus-faced entity, intrinsically paradoxical, which is constantly expanding through a combination of violence and a self-indulgent civilising mission. Without going that far, others have argued that the scholarly debates around the gap between values and practice serve to legitimise an EU foreign policy that, without some moderate criticism, would become a messianic project—a teleological endeavour that assumes possession of the truth of universal values.
In any case, there seems to be some agreement among scholars that paradox is an underlying feature of EU foreign policy. Maybe the strangeness of a value-based foreign policy persists because we are taught to think in binary terms—liberal or illiberal—and in Eurocentric terms, with the liberal being the inside or 'us' and the illiberal being the outside or 'them' (the garden and the jungle in Josep Borrell’s terms). The binary liberal/illiberal might be due to the EU’s nature as an Unidentified Political Object, between the nation-state and the multilateral organisation. In domestic debates, it is more common to accept that policies defined in liberal terms can be used against human rights, and that oppression and military aggression can be justified using concepts like democracy.
In contrast, the founding myth of the European Union does not allow us to think beyond the formal meaning of the values enshrined in the treaties. The story of EU integration is rooted in a shared commitment of liberal democracies to peaceful cooperation, as well as the rejection of fascism and war. However, the foundational myth operates as a distorted mirror that reflects an idealised vision of us. A concept like 'Europeanisation' is very often equated with the socialisation of liberal practices, as if nothing cruel or brutal could originate from Europe. This creates a paradox or sense of strangeness when we witness the bureaucratisation and humanitarianisation of far-right discourses in EU policy, exemplified by concepts like 'effective and human return policy’.
Moreover, the idea of a liberal ‘us’ and illiberal ‘them’ is deeply embedded in a Eurocentric imaginary that permeates culture and politics, and conceives the Continent, and by extension the EU, as an exception. In The Idea of Europe, the literary critic George Steiner identified memory places and cafés among other features as markers of European identity, although paradoxically, the two can be found around the world. The same applies to EU values — they are not exclusively European or EU-based — and they can be mobilised by subaltern peoples to defend themselves against EU policies. Thus, we think it is paradoxical that there was a time when Tunisia was more democratic than Hungary, the EU was promoting democracy in the country, and Tunisian civil society protested EU migration policies for violating the human rights of migrants.
Yet, in the face of the autocratic turn in Europe, even critics might look back with nostalgia at a value-based EU foreign policy plagued with this kind of ‘paradoxes’. The idea of the gap between values and foreign policy presupposes that democracy, human rights and rule of law have some immutability. But, although values seem set in stone in the treaties, this does not completely protect them from reinterpretation. What has until now seemed strange or paradoxical (often from a position of white privilege) might become the new normal. If hegemony shifts in Europe, so might the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, as has happened with the US Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade or the European Court of Human Rights in N.D. and N.T. v. Spain, endorsing the collective expulsion of migrants against the principle of non-refoulement. Then we will have entered a post-normative power Europe moment, in which the gap between practice and values will have been bridged, closing the possibility of paradox. Unlike in Ian Manners’ normative power Europe, EU values will serve practice rather than the other way around. In Orwellian terms, truth becomes malleable under the dictates of political leaders. At that point, we might want to start asking not just what EU values are, but what they are for.
Adrià Rivera has a PhD in Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He was a Predoctoral Fellow FPU at IBEI.
He obtained a predoctoral contract from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FPU). His fields of interest are European external action, in particular regarding the southern neighbourhood, and human rights and democratisation. He holds a Bachelor in Political Science from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a MA in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action from Sciences Po Paris.
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The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of EU-VALUES Network.