Normative Power Europe in Action? The European Union’s Engagement with R2P in a Transitional International Order

ECR2P's Research Director, Edward Newman, and Acting Co-Director, Cristina Stefan, write on the European Union as a normative leader for the Responsibility to Protect in a transitional international order.

The European Union's (EU) engagement with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) reflects a surprisingly mixed record in some respects. The slow pace and perhaps ambivalence with which the EU has embraced R2P, in spite of the support of key individual members, reflects political disagreements about the principle in national capitals and bureaucratic reluctance in Brussels.

However, in recent years the EU appears to have finally shifted its substantial resources behind R2P. In 2013 the European Parliament launched a major initiative to consolidate and operationalize the EU’s support for R2P and to formulate a ‘European consensus’ on the issue. In 2016 the EU appointed an R2P Focal Point to coordinate its activities in this area – the first regional organization to do so. The European External Action Service officially launched its ‘Toolkit for Atrocity Prevention’ in January 2019, designed to coordinate European responses to atrocities in a proactive and coherent manner. EU members also represent an active group of national R2P Focal Points. The EU has been the only regional organization to contribute to each of the ten United Nations (UN) General Assembly Interactive Dialogues on R2P to date. EU members have also provided input toward each of the ten Annual Reports of the UN Secretary-General on the topic. Furthermore, the EU Delegation to the UN has actively participated in the activities and meetings of the ‘Group of Friends of R2P’ in New York. All this has helped to establish the R2P label in diplomatic circles and strengthen its normative traction.

These initiatives have taken place in parallel with broader efforts to project a more active global role for the EU in conflict resolution, security, and normative leadership. As the EU High Representative stated, in December 2018, ‘The Responsibility to Protect is a principle that the EU has integrated in its policies and we are closely working together with international partners, in particular with the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, and civil society organisations, to end impunity…and to establish effective prevention schemes’. However, doubts have lingered about the EU’s capacity and willingness to internalise R2P. Despite the European Parliament’s call in 2013 for consensus and coordination across the EU on R2P, a significant EU attempt to implement R2P in this sense has been slow to materialize. As the LSE’s Karen Smith has observed, the response of the EU to atrocities in cases such as Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Myanmar has tended to be rather late, reactive, and without significant political backing.

The EU’s recent activism – at least in terms of its internal bureaucratic organisation and declarations – therefore raises a number of questions. Can the EU be a global leader in championing R2P, at a time when its normative authority is arguably in decline, and when international order is shifting against liberal norms? How will the EU’s commitment to R2P weigh against its geopolitical and economic interests? These questions are linked to the transitional international order. Rising powers have increasingly resisted key aspects of the liberal international order and openly contest principles such as R2P. While non-Western contestation has increased, international cooperation around liberal values and norms has also been problematized by an apparent rise in nationalism and populism across the traditional sponsors of international order.

The President of the European Commission portrayed the EU as being ‘in an existential crisis’ in 2016, and the latest EU Global Strategy similarly observed that ‘We live in times of existential crisis, within and beyond the European Union.’ While the Global Strategy emphasized the need for a ‘rules based global order…guided by principles’ and an ‘idealistic aspiration’, the sub-text seems to increasingly reflect a power-political worldview. Unsurprisingly, the focus is on a more instrumentalist, strategic approach to tackling global challenges, rather than one driven by normative liberal commitments. This raises questions about the EU’s capacity to provide normative leadership in support of R2P.

In addition to the global normative contestation in relation to R2P, there is also evidence of normative contestation within Europe. Divisions remain across and within EU members regarding the scope and operationalization of R2P, in particular regarding the role of military force in preventing or stopping egregious human rights violations. The EU has also been slow to internalize R2P into external action machinery. In addition, the EU’s credibility in terms of its leadership role in promoting humanitarian values can be questioned in relation to ‘internal’ standards and practices, and this has resulted in some reluctance on the part of European leaders and officials to project R2P as a strategy. Minority rights, attitudes towards hate crimes and incitement, and policies towards people fleeing human rights abuse have all raised questions about Europe’s commitment to humanitarianism, or even accusations of double standards. In this sense, Europe’s standing as a credible normative actor in relation to R2P is potentially in tension with – or even problematized by – the policies or standards of justice within some European countries.

It seems that there is a clear gap between ‘progressive’ experts within the EU system and national political elites who are more pragmatic about many human rights principles. On the face of it, the EU is stepping up to take a leadership role in R2P and to better align its existing external action with the norm. But if the EU’s engagement with R2P is a test of its normative leadership – its ability to shape international politics as a result of its constitutive values – then the prognosis is not encouraging.

The prioritization of hard economic and security interests, and the desire to avoid political conflict with strategic partners, allies and adversaries, mean that norms such as the R2P have become something of a luxury, especially for national actors if not for EU officials. And from the external perspective, the persuasion of the EU as a normative actor is in doubt within this transitional international order in which liberal internationalism is in retreat. Even if the EU was not facing severe internal challenges, the changing international order is less and less conducive to Europe playing a global leadership role.

Edward Newman is a Professor of International Security, and Cristina G. Stefan is an Associate Professor of International Relations, in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. This blog is based upon Edward Newman and Cristina G. Stefan, ‘Normative Power Europe? The EU's Embrace of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ in a Transitional International Order’, Journal of Common Market Studies, forthcoming.