The EU concept of the 'Strategic Partnership': Identifying the 'unifying' criteria for the differentiation of Strategic Partners (original) (raw)
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As a foreign policy tool, the EU's strategic partnerships are a legacy of the post-Cold War era. Although they have long underpinned the EU's quest for effective multilateralism, the effectiveness, coherence and sustainability of strategic partnerships in today's fraught global landscape is in question in their current form. What constitutes an EU strategic partnership and, what exactly is 'strategic' about it, has become increasingly unclear. To enhance these partnerships, we suggest that the EU take a series of steps, which we outline below.
ENGAGE Working Paper Series 31, 2024
The European Union’s foreign policy aimed at building and sustaining effective multilateralism as a key strategic objective, as outlined in its 2003 European Security Strategy and later revised in the 2016 Global Strategy into effective global governance. The European Union’s foreign policy encompasses bilateral agreements with global players, identified as strategic partners, both with state actors and international organisations. There are multiple facets of the EU’s engagement with global strategic partners, some of which are defined within a legal framework, and some selected on a more ad hoc basis and in an informal manner. This working paper provides an assessment of the European Union’s engagement with its strategic partners, building on the previous research findings of the ENGAGE project. The EU’s external environment has altered significantly since the beginning of the project, with the unprecedented global pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the Israeli-Hamas war in October 2023. Whilst the EU’s relations with some strategic partners has led to the drafting of new agreements, its relations with certain strategic partners have deteriorated – Russia, which was previously defined as a partner, has become a strategic rival. The dynamic aspect and flexibility of the EU’s engagement with strategic partners is critical to enhance the effectiveness, coherence and sustainability of this foreign policy tool. This working paper aims to unpack the EU’s strategic partnerships and to assess whether they are effective, coherent and sustainable tools. The former toolbox for building a multilateral world order – strategic partnerships being one of these instruments – has proven unable to respond to rising power competition, populism and nationalism at the international level. Intensified complexity at the global level brings multilateralism at odds with the recent emphasis on nationalism and national interests. This contestation on the merits of multilateralism is a new complication for the EU’s strategic partnerships and their role in building a multilateral, rule-based international order driven by both values and material interests. As a result, strategic partnerships need a major update, with an in-depth review of existing agreements, harmonisation of Member State and EU institution positions, and increasing multilateral management of bilateral agreements.
ATHENAEUM. Polish Political Science Studies, 2018
Strategic partnerships are nowadays one of the tools most willingly applied in foreign policy. The subject of the presented analysis is the institutionalization process of a strategic partnership understood as the functioning of certain norms and rules in a given relationship (expressed in the founding documents of partnerships) and the regularization of joint bodies and meeting formats. The aim of the article is a comparative analysis of institutional solutions applied in the European Union’s strategic partnerships with its established partners: the United States, Japan, and Canada. The results show that it is possible to identify a pattern of institutionalization process used by the European Union in its relations with strategic partners; they also reveal how great importance contemporary players in the international arena attach to institutionalization processes in their mutual relations.
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European Security, 2024
The EU has been confronted with novel global challenges ranging from economic, migration and security related crises, to an interstate war on its Eastern and Southern borders. Strategic partnerships have emerged as one of the key potential instruments to navigate these challenges, yet with contested debates over their impact on the EU's global standing as a foreign policy actor. This paper analyses how, if at all, EU strategic partnerships indicate a maturation of EU foreign policy in the global context. We argue that the utilisation of EU strategic partners emerges as an area with varied degrees of maturation. We identify three main indicators of these varied maturation degrees to assess the EU's use of strategic partnerships. First, we focus on the rationale behind the continuous tension between the EU's normative and strategic drivers for engaging in strategic partnerships. The second indicator of maturation is the EU's proactive role in adapting to its changing global environment, where a mature EU identifies other global players and presents them with cooperation opportunities. Finally, institutional maturity as a function of vertical coherence implies the proactive management of divisions among the EU institutions and member states over the modalities of these partnerships.
2015
In the last decades the usage of ‘strategic partnership’ as a conceptual framework for cooperative relationships between international political actors has been increasing. However, there is a lack of understanding both in the academia and within the policy-making community regarding the meaning of this expression. This thesis discusses the nature and uses of concept of ‘strategic partnership’ in international politics. Based on ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions from the Philosophy of Language, Pragmatics, Social Constructivism, the English School of International Relations and Positioning Theory, I present a pluralist theoretical framework to assess the uses of ‘strategic partnership’ in international politics not as a descriptive concept based on fixed properties but as a fluid political concept. I analyze the uses made of ‘strategic partnership’ in the context of the relations between the EU and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and dr...
Conceptually Defining Global Strategic Partner(ship)
ENGAGE Working Paper Series 13, 2022
This working paper provides an assessment of the European Union’s (EU’s) global strategic partners by putting forward a theoretical and conceptual definition of strategic partnership. The paper identifies the EU’s global strategic partners both in terms of those which are defined within a legal framework and those that are selected on a more ad-hoc basis. The paper’s conceptual examination of the term “strategic partner(ship)” and identification of the EU’s global strategic partners aligns with the main objectives of the ENGAGE project: assisting the EU’s foreign policy by allowing a more structured engagement with other countries, thereby enhancing the EU’s ability to play a more assertive role in effectively and sustainably meeting strategic challenges in global politics. This paper’s focus on the differences across multiple strategic partners, both formally identified and informally treated, with respect to their engagement with the EU highlights the challenges the EU faces in its foreign policy and global standing. Those challenges are explored in the paper in terms of the relevant forms of cooperation and conflict between the EU, its Member States and their respective global strategic partners.
Partnering for Global Security: The EU, its strategic partners and transnational security challenges
This article reviews the scope and depth of the European Union’s cooperation on security issues with key global powers, i.e., its so-called ‘strategic partners’. It starts from the assumption that the EU pursues its ambition to become a global security actor as stated in its strategic documents and that, to do so, it must develop partnerships with other countries. The three key questions that this article addresses are the following: How do these security partnerships unfold? Do they deliver? And do they matter at all? The article starts with a quick overview of the key security challenges identified by the EU, before exploring the Union’s attempt to become a (global) security actor, which is the pre-requisite to enter international partnerships. The main part of the article then looks specifically and in detail at the EU’s ten strategic partnerships across four security issues: non-proliferation, terrorism, organized crime and cyber-security. A final section assesses the value of these security partnerships.
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The European Union awarded the special status of strategic partner to ten states. Its key partners are dissimilar in political philosophies and structure, power status, ethical values, economic development, unequal in size and mineral reserves. Some of them are traditional Post-Second World War partners while the others have established recent partnerships in a new multipolar world order. However, from the very beginning the EU Conception of Strategic Partnership was just an assemblage of political statements without any official definition and clear established criteria for being chosen as a strategic partner. In this regard, this paper aims to analyze the strategic partnership phenomenon in EU Foreign Policy and provide our own definition of the term with a view to underpin it subsequently by common criteria. Based upon obtained main components the Binary Logistic Model was applied, which not only did allow to make the election of EU strategic partners more science-based but also ...