Thread by @ottocrat

Indulge me in this thread about what I've heard someone call "a brilliant week for the EU" (in terms of its policy response, not in a wider sense of course - the past week has been a disaster for all of us, not just #Ukraine).

As someone who has spent my career working in EU foreign policy, I do find it tremendously heartening to see us win praise for getting it largely right, acting quickly and decisively. This is why I joined - to see the EU use its weight to defend our values from bullies.

And from where I sit it is rather stunning to see us deliver a truly punchy sanctions package, and mobilise EU funding to deliver arms - even fighter planes - to our friends to help them defend themselves.

But I want to caution people against getting ahead of themselves. Important precedents have been set, taboos have been broken, but certain fundamental realities about EU foreign policy have not changed.

It's good to see the wider world wake up to the concept of European "strategic autonomy", a concept much discussed in EU circles since Russia's aggression in 2013/2014 and especially during the Trump years.

In 2018, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's told the European Parliament that "Europe has to become a more sovereign actor in international relations." "What we want is to become more autonomous and live up to our global responsibilities." ec.europa.eu/info/prioritie…

What does this mean in practice? Juncker's Commission proposed (in 2018) to extend the EU's Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) into certain (non-military) areas of the EU's foreign & security policy. europarl.europa.eu/legislative-tr…

This not very sexy sounding initiative goes right to the heart of the issue: the EU's foreign and security policy is intergovernmental. That means the EU only acts when all its member states agree. This is a crucial difference to - for example - EU trade policy.

In so-called "community" areas, such as trade policy, the EU can legislate a bit like a sovereign government & Member States (acting as the legislature in the Council) don't have a veto. Laws are passed by majority (QMV). But foreign policy is "intergovernmental": all must agree.

This means any one of the EU's 27 member states can block the EU acting in the field of foreign or security policy. Any one of the 27 could have stopped the EU responding the way it did last week in response to Russia's invasion.

The fact that none of the 27 *did* block the EU is an achievement in itself, and a mark of the gravity of the situation. But as long as any one member state *can* block the EU, our foreign policy punches will be pulled. The back marker sets the pace.

What this means in effect is that the EU tends to exert its foreign policy muscle only when the issue is uncontroversial. This is generally either because it's not very important, or because it's existentially important. In the case of #Ukraine, it's the latter.

In most other situations, either we don't act at all - because we can't achieve unanimity - or we spend a long time building consensus through compromise in a way that prevents us from acting as quickly and decisively as we have this past week.

This is why you will often hear or read criticism of the EU's response in crisis situations - the EU gets blamed for inaction, when the EU wants to act but one member state - say Hungary for example - refuses to go along with the rest.

Obviously, for those who believe the EU can and should play a more robust role internationally in defence of our interests and values, this is far from ideal. The past week hasn't really changed this because EU foreign policy remains intergovernmental.

People say the EU is finally living up to its potential, and discovering its muscle. Economically, the EU has long been a superpower. That's because in economic policy we have majority voting. To realise our potential, we also need majority voting in foreign & security policy.

Speaking now as a private citizen, I believe that we need to move foreign and security policy out of the intergovernmental and into the 'community' part of EU decision-making, to enable us to act quickly and decisively all the time. This would need a change to the EU Treaty.

And here we hit the snag. EU treaty change has a lot in common with UK electoral reform. The UK's democracy is fundamentally undermined by the First Past The Post #FPTP system, but it can only be changed by the party in power which has a vested interest in the status quo.

In the same way, the EU's capacity to flex its muscle is fundamentally undermined by the national veto, but this can only be changed by unanimity among 27 member states that individually have a vested interest in the status quo.

It may be that the current crisis will provide the spur that all 27 EU member states need to agree to give up their vetoes and act more collectively when it comes to foreign and security policy. But that hasn't happened yet. /ends

ht to @tfoale for the pub conversation prompting this reflection