The resurgence of great-power politics has made a foreign-policy-paralysed Union look like a far smaller actor than its actual size. The erosion of the rules-based world order brings with it challenges that the EU cannot meet without a genuinely common foreign and security policy.
JEF Finland demands that the European Union make its common security policy more binding by deepening the integration of foreign and security policy. An independent Europe is the best defence against hostile great powers.
The European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has failed to achieve its goals of safeguarding peace, promoting international cooperation and protecting the EU’s core values, such as democracy and human rights: Ukraine has not received the military and humanitarian support it deserves, the United States’ war in Iran has not been unequivocally condemned, and no clear position has been taken on the crisis in Gaza.
Instead of a common foreign policy, the EU currently has twenty-seven different foreign policy lines, between which compromises are constantly being sought. Member states must shift the focus of their foreign policy in a more European direction, since the current setup does not allow common foreign policy lines to be formed. On the contrary, it leads the EU to produce mostly bland diplomatic statements instead of genuine action.
The European Council’s unanimity principle is one of the key obstacles to a common foreign policy, since a single member state can paralyse the entire EU’s ability to act. In addition, member states’ veto power makes it harder to form foreign policy lines. Council decision-making in its current form gives great powers an incentive to interfere in individual member states’ domestic and foreign policy, and even their elections. The unanimity principle should be replaced with qualified majority voting to get gridlocked foreign policy moving.
A more independent foreign policy is not possible without closer European defence cooperation. It is no longer enough to talk only of a more European NATO — we must also talk of a Europe that is more independent in security policy terms. Trump’s United States no longer treats NATO as the original defence alliance it was built to be after the world wars, but as a constant means of leverage. In addition, under Trump the United States has reduced its military presence in Europe and repeatedly threatened its allied countries.
Although NATO remains a form of military cooperation, the EU and its member states must specifically develop European defence. This means, for example, joint military procurement, investment in the European defence industry, and harmonising national armed forces towards a common European model. A common European defence would likely lower individual member states’ defence costs, and its operation would not depend on, for instance, changing US administrations, since its command structures would be based in Europe.
Common European defence cooperation would require revisiting Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, the so-called “defence clause.” Article 42.7 obliges each member state to support another member state whose territory is subject to armed attack. However, the article must be reformed to be more binding and more precisely worded than it is now, since European defence cannot rest solely on an expectation of solidarity. The article should emphasise that an attack on a single member state is to be interpreted as a territorial violation of the entire EU, justifying the activation of common defence.
Exactly seventy-six years ago to the day, the Schuman Declaration stated that world peace requires creative efforts to be achieved. European integration is an example of that creativity, one that has secured a historic peace among member states. As a peace project, the EU has also guaranteed security for an independent Finland. A Europe that is more independent in foreign and security policy terms would be able to stand more firmly behind its principles without fear of sanctions from great powers. The EU’s member states acting as a united front would raise the threshold for great powers to pressure individual member states. A more united Europe is not a threat to national identities, languages and cultures. On the contrary, it guarantees the continuity of that diversity – and that is why Europe’s independence day is also Finland’s independence day.
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Pieta Päivänen