Rebooting EU foreign policy

With Federica Mogherini of Italy taking office as the new EU High Representative on foreign policy matters, is it time for a fundamental rethinking of exactly how the EU does foreign policy? “Yes” was the clear answer from the co-authors of ECFR's recent report, “Rebooting EU Foreign Policy”.

One of those co-authors, Nick Witney, had the opportunity to lay out his argument at a recent ECFR event, chaired by Quentin Peel. Europeans in general, he explained, do not realise how far their international stock price has fallen. This simple fact has not really sunk in at the centre of European policy making. But, he said, although this meant that a fundamental rethink of foreign policy was necessary, this need not get too bound up with the idea of 'strategy'. Here is a short podcast from Nick, explaining his thinking:

Also taking part in the event was Spiros Economides of the LSE. He also believed a major rethink was necessary, although he thought the word 'strategy' should not be avoided. He said that Europeans needed to be able to say, ‘these are the goals we would like to achieve’, so that they can then discuss the means to achieve these particular goals. Here is a short podcast of him laying out his thoughts:

If these two podcasts have whet your appetite, you can find the entire audio from the event in the events section of our website – and the “Rebooting EU Foreign Policy” report is of course to be found in the publications section.