10 Recommendations to Make the European Union a Stronger Global Actor

Monika Sus, Cornelius Adebahr & Ángel Saz-Carranza

Following the European Parliament elections in June, a new EU leadership will take the helm to navigate the Union through an array of significant challenges. The EU faces an unprecedented combination of external threats: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the growing influences of Russia and China in the EU’s neighbourhood; the repercussions of the Israel-Gaza war; the Union’s economic, energy, and military dependencies and exposure to climate change; the rise of right-wing authoritarianism across many countries in Europe and its neighbourhood; and the uncertainty of the United States’ commitment to European security. This critical geopolitical juncture, at which the very existence of the European integration project is at risk, requires a robust EU foreign and security policy.

The task of the incoming leadership is to make the Union fit for geopolitical purposes. All too often, the EU’s global action has been ineffective. It has suffered from a crippling lack of strategic foresight, a dearth of instruments to address acute threats, piecemeal responses because of the lack of a common vision, and overstretch of the Union’s resources across too many regions and domains.

To address these shortcomings, the EU needs to become far more strategically selective in how it pursues its interests and goals, as defined by the EU Global Strategy of 2016 and the Strategic Compass of 2022. Given its finite resources and limited clout in certain parts of the world, the Union needs to consciously decide in which regions and crises it engages and how it can do so most effectively. This includes critically reviewing, improving, and deliberately phasing out some existing mechanisms and instruments. To this end, the EU needs to leverage its heft in trade and investment policy, financial power, diplomatic presence, and rule-making capacities while steadily building security and defence capabilities. It also needs to harness its institutional structure to make the most of its comparative advantages vis-à-vis other international organisations and states.

The following ten recommendations would help the EU become a stronger global actor capable of effectively addressing current and future geopolitical challenges. The first four concern the institutional framework of EU foreign and security policy, while the next six tackle individual policy areas. Taken together, they represent a comprehensive plan for improving the way the EU operates on the international stage.