Toward Defining and Deploying the European Interest(s)

Summary:

Adopting the traditional concept of the “national interest” to the European level through the definition of “European interests” will help improve EU policymaking overall and assist EU leaders in garnering public support for actions taken to those ends.

The EU’s status as a hybrid — part state, part international organization — without a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within its territory and from which member states can choose to leave requires that European interests are defined much more broadly than traditional national interests focused on states’ physical self-preservation. Instead, European interests must be defined as those indispensable for the continued preservation of the EU as a well-functioning entity with its fundamental institutions and democratic values intact.

Some European interests are revealed by the solutions adopted in their defense during acute EU crises. They can also be motivated by the EU’s desire to resist the effects of other countries’ extra-territorial policies outside the national security and military realm, the need to retain a size that helps retain its global influence as its share of global GDP and population declines, or the need to collaborate given the nature of the challenges the EU face. As the EU is unlikely to evolve into a single, wholly sovereign entity, it will continue to possess fewer traditional military and national security assets than its economic weight would otherwise suggest, and it must temper the scope of its related European interests accordingly.

Based on this approach, six distinct European interests are identified. Some are simultaneously of a domestic and an external nature for the EU, and their designation as being domestically or externally oriented is to indicate their predominant orientation. These interests will also overlap and may even occasionally come into conflict with each other. They are:

• Preserving basic democratic values and the rule of law in the EU.
• Maintaining broadly similar economic trajectories among EU member states and regions
• Securing the EU’s role as a global leader in the fight against climate change.
• Upholding a credibly and uniformly controlled EU external border.
• Maintaining constructive and principled relations with EU neighbors.
• Sustaining a cooperative international system and sustaining good relations with like-minded third countries.

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