European Structural Power on the Wane? EU Foreign Policy between External and Internal Challenges

The European Union’s (EU) foreign policy software needs updating: it appears to be increasingly out of sync with the operating system of international politics. At the turn of the millennium, many had hoped that the EU’s internal model and institutional nature – as a transnational multilateral governance platform based on international law and soft power – would make it well prepared for, and even a potential leader in, the world to come (Howorth, 2010). Yet, postmodern Europe has not seen the advent of the kind of post-Westphalian international system it had hoped for. Instead, the EU finds itself rather ill-equipped in the new era of great-power competition. Its distinctive approach to foreign policy, which has mainly consisted in the export of democratic governance and economic standards, is increasingly under strain at a time where it is both tested externally and contested internally...