EU foreign policy in 2023: Between two wars and future members’ expectations

Can the EU be a truly global player? In 2023 it surely attempted to do so, with limited success, as it had to grapple with the challenge of juggling multiple crises while looking to project its influence to neighbours and partners.

Two wars, plus other crises

In Ukraine, the frontlines barely shifted 22 months into the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two, with no decisive movement on either side of the battlefield and Russian missile strikes continuing to target cities and civilian positions.

While some cracks have started showing in the support Ukraine has received from its biggest backers in its fight against Russia, Europeans have realised they’re in for the long-haul.

In a bid to speed up military support for Ukraine, the EU proposed a landmark three-track approach to secure ammunition for Kyiv and build up its own domestic arms industry and vowed to explore a €20 billion war fund option to keep the country’s armed forces equipped for the next four years.

However, both the plan on ammunition and on weapons funding have run into issues.

With Israel and Hamas at war in last quarter of 2023, Europeans were forced to divert part of their crisis diplomacy attention to the Middle East, where the fighting has cost thousands of lives since October.

The October events caught European officials and diplomats off-guard and came only weeks after the EU had hoped to drive a new ‘incentives’-focused Middle East peace initiative aimed at re-starting talks between Israel and Palestine.

The patchy and messy European response over the first week of the conflict did not play well internally either, with EU staff based around the world rather vocally criticising Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s approach.

By December, a majority of EU member states backed a United Nations resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”.

With Israeli forces deep inside Gaza, the EU has started looking into what the future may look like after the fighting ends.

But while showing unity and steadfast support for Ukraine and searching for a joint position on Gaza took centre-stage in the EU’s crisis diplomacy, a lack of progress was painfully visible in mediating Europe’s other crises – from Serbia and Kosovo to Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Eyes on accession

In a historic move, after the European Commission recommended opening accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova in October, EU leaders signed off on the decision in December, despite an earlier threat from Hungary to veto the deal.

The move is likely to boost the bloc’s fledgling enlargement process, but it only allows the start of what is likely to be a lengthy negotiating process, which can take years.

But the question of when the bloc will be ready to take in new members can only be answered once Brussels figures out how it will function when it expands from 27 to potentially 30+ members.

Rich European regions are already concerned that enlargement could result in a reduction in cohesion funds, but the European Commission said it is still too early to start talking about that kind of money.

A new dawn for defence 

European defence has also experienced a revival after Russia’s war on Ukraine, especially throughout 2023.

With a major EU defence industrial strategy in the planning, the European Commission’s defence experts have started asking EU member states and the bloc’s arms industry how it can make the latter more flexible and less dependent on third countries.

The ideas in the non-papers and questionnaires are centred around plans to incentivise governments’ demand and supply, make the sector more flexible and innovative, boost cross-border collaboration, and make the EU independent from other markets.

In the summer, the bloc also held its first-ever live military exercises (MILEX) from the Rota naval base in southern Spain, in what is also a test case for the EU’s recently established 5,000-strong crisis response force.

The force is meant to be operational by 2025 and the idea is that it could also be used to deliver humanitarian assistance in situations such as that currently in the Gaza Strip. Would the EU use its common budget as an incentive to make member states commit more capabilities and personnel to the bloc’s future force? Remains to be seen.

‘Looking beyond’

Over the past year, Ukraine’s Western allies have also been struggling to court countries of the Global South.

The world’s biggest emerging economies—including India, Brazil, and South Africa—remain largely neutral on the Ukraine war, while Europe faces a world order that has significantly shifted – with BRICS going up from 5 to 11 members and G20 including the African Union.

Europeans became painfully aware of the fact when Latin American countries poured cold water on the bloc’s efforts to rally the continent’s support for Ukraine and came up with more self-centred demands of their own.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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