Understanding EU Foreign Policy Cooperation Choices

1. Understanding EU Foreign Policy Cooperation Choices Leanne C. Powner University of Michigan LPowner@umich.edu

2. Research Question • When does the EU choose (or manage) to cooperate on foreign policy? • When they do, which tools do they use? Why? • Incidences of cooperation are nonrandom. • Extent of selection bias tells us about extent of preference convergence among members. • Part of a larger project on foreign policy cooperation and forum shopping

3. EU Foreign Policy Cooperation • ‘Common Foreign and Security Policy’ (CFSP) created with Treaty on European Union, 1993 • Expands on ‘European Political Cooperation’ of 1973-93 • Institutionalization intended to increase Union’s capacity to act in foreign affairs. • Purely intergovernmental process, despite provisions for qualified majority voting and Commission “association”

4. CFSP Tools and Choices • Declaration – collective statement • Existed under EPC • Conclusion – short-term policy statement agreed by ministers or heads of state at a meeting • Common Position – medium-term policy statement around which all member states coordinate policy • forms the basis of all Union activity on that issue • Joint Action – coordinated action plan usually involving expenditure; scope can be large or small • All require unanimous votes or consensus • Demarches not coded; not public record • EP/Commission action not considered here: focus is on interstate cooperation.

5. Barriers to Study • Cooperation is not random. Studying only successful instances of cooperation – the set of declarations, etc. – results in a biased sample. • Inference is invalid. • Solution: use an unbiased sample of events to which the EU could have reacted; compare to actual behavior

6. Research Design • 300observations • 199 completed here • Double-random selection process: • Pages randomly selected from Keesing’s Contemporary Archive, 1994-2003 • Qualifying international events identified • One qualifying event per page randomly selected

7. Do Preferences Converge Over Time? • If preferences are converging, cooperation should be more likely as time goes on. • Share of randomly selected observations on which the EU acts. • Irregular, but rising trend.

8. Regional Interests • Is the EU more sensitive to events in its own area? • share of events per region with response • Yes, non-EU Europe (34.5%) and former USSR (33.3%) are high, but Africa is highest (44.1%). South America is ignored (0.8%).

9. ….However…. • While EU may respond to most events in neighboring regions, these actions do not make up a large part of activity. • Most attention appears directed elsewhere. • 8% of actions (1/3 of total activity) in non-EU Europe and former USSR

10. Human Rights and CFSP • Promoting human rights is a stated focus of CFSP • Worldwide: Human rights issues are about as likely as any other issue to receive a response (23.8% HR vs 24.7% rest) • In neighboring regions (non-EU Europe and Former USSR), only 1 of 5 human rights events received an EU response.

11. Preliminary Conclusions • EU foreign policy behavior generally corresponds to expectations. • Trends are often weaker than expected, but do move in the predicted direction. • The EU is more sensitive to events in neighboring regions. • These areas are more likely to receive a response on any given event than other regions. • This does not hold for human rights issues – counters expectations • However, neighborhood activity is only 1/3 total activity.

12. Next Steps • Expand sample to 1994-2003 • Probit models with additional IVs • Expand outcome set: • European Parliament: substitution effect? • Commission: delegation? • Non-EU institutions: NATO, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) • Case studies of preference formation process