Amidst the fallout of Hamas’ attack on Israel and the developing retaliation from the Israeli government, it quickly became accepted wisdom that the EU was divided on how to respond.
It’s not hard to see why. Right from the start, there was a cacophony of voices coming out with various messages.
A Commissioner seemingly declared unilaterally that aid to Palestinians would be suspended, a message that was later completely reversed. The Commission President gave unequivocal support for Israel, while the EU’s top foreign policy representative said that Israel was acting outside of international law. France and Spain quickly insisted on the need for a ceasefire, while Germany and Austria strongly argued against.
Still, there are good reasons to believe that the EU is broadly united in its approach and that issues other than substance have caused the EU’s foreign policy message to be lost in confusion.
One place we can start is with this perennial question: “Who do I call when I want to talk to Europe?” (Henry Kissinger, potentially).
The EU hoped it had resolved this question when it revamped the post of High Representative for Foreign Affairs in 2009. With a de facto foreign minister for the EU, they should be the first port of call for EU foreign affairs. Yet this is not what happens in reality.
Following Hamas’ attack, the current High Representative did give his views, but apparently only in an independent capacity. That his statements did not match up to what was being said by the Commission President cast doubt over who was actually making this call.
At the same time, the heads of EU governments and their foreign ministers were also making their own statements, again seemingly without coordination.
With no agreement on who truly speaks for EU foreign policy, what we get instead is a race as everyone seeks to get in first, hoping to establish an EU position by means of a fait accompli.
Perhaps this is inevitable when it comes to the relationship between the Commission and the member states. But at least within the Commission there is no excuse for not carrying out a basic level of internal coordination and message discipline. A failure of team leadership (and probably some personal antagonisms) have served to exaggerate the EU’s internal splits.
Now, none of this is new information. The EU struggles to assert itself as a world power with a single position because of its institutional set-up. Institutional reform is hard and so the problem persists even though everyone realises it could be better.
What isn’t so hard is to just act faster. Again and again, the EU allows itself to look divided because it insists on having drawn-out public. Across the world, democratic leaders have to manage different views on pertinent issues, but these talks happen behind closed doors, only presenting a public message when everyone is on the same page.
Yet the EU does not act this way. No one is responsible for bringing everyone together quickly or for prioritising the EU’s position. To the extent that the European Commission is sometimes imagined as the body that should do this (and hence wrongly described as the EU’s ‘executive’ in many newspapers), it is hamstrung by the fact that it needs a mandate from the member states. The Commission President couldn’t be criticised for not having issued a view on how to best react to Hamas’ attack on Israel, it’s simply that her perspective was no longer relevant once the national heads of government met to decide the EU’s actual stance.
What should happen in the event of a crisis is that emergency meetings of the European Council and of the European Parliament should be called, with the Commission sitting in on both. Ideally, this would happen within just a few days of a crisis starting.
In practice, these discussions only took place 10 days (in the case of the Parliament) and 19 days (for the European Council) after the Hamas attack took place. When it finally came to it, almost everyone was arguing for condemnation of Hamas and some support for humanitarian aid to get to Gaza. A lengthy discussion on whether to call of a humanitarian pause (singular) or humanitarian pauses (plural) does not reflect deep political divisions on issues of substance.
However, this came too late. Inevitably the delay gave ample time for differing views to be aired, reported and dissected multiple times over before a collective position was reached.
There are of course differences of opinion within the EU on how to approach Israel and the complex issue of combating terrorism while defending Palestinian rights. Yet many countries and their populations still subscribe to a policy that seeks to balance both Israel and Palestine; a situation not reflected by reports of ‘division’ within the EU.
If the EU wants media narratives to change, to avoid going through the same circus during the next crisis, then its politicians will need to start treating the EU position, and the necessary internal coordination, as a priority, not an afterthought.