The European Union in Crisis

Abstract

The seventh chapter is concerned with analyzing the crisis of the EU and its negative impact on the functioning of the Euro-Atlantic security system. The symptoms of the crisis came to the fore during work on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in 2002–2004, which ended in failure. With the Lisbon Treaty, which strengthened the inter-governmental character of the EU, the CSDP fall into stagnation. The EU also couldn’t function as an effective security policy actor on account of the financial and economic crisis 2008–2011. The EU then had to deal with the migration crisis that began in 2014. For many years, nationalistic and centrifugal tendencies threatening the EU’s survival as an integration project also had been on the rise. In 2016, the British decided to take their country out of the EU. The EU’s power to act weakened and the EU did not play a positive role in the Ukraine crisis. Nevertheless, the EU made successive attempts to revitalize the CSDP, drew up a new global foreign and security policy strategy in 2016, discussed how to build an European army, and established Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO).