The European Union's International Identity 

The concept of identity has recently gained considerable currency in the social sciences. A strand of International Relations literature suggests that the politics of identity is the EU's central problem.

The EU's identity is a dimension of its international activity, that is, the network of relationships that the EC/EU has created and maintains with states or groups of states. This activity consist of the use of instruments - informational, procedural, transference, and overt - though which policy is implemented.

Informational

Informational instruments - 'strategic' or 'specific' - consist of promulgations of the rationale of the Union's relationship with a state or a group of states.

The Common Positions and Joint Actions implemented under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) are examples of Strategic Informational Instruments . The Common Positions and Joint Actions make clear to third parties that the EU has adopted a specific position on a particular issue or on relations with a particular country. They may, or may not, be supported by the use of additional instruments (see below).

Strategic Informational Instruments are also used in the conclusions of European Council meetings and in Commission Communications. Examples include the Essen European Council meeting's pronouncement in December 1994 on the adoption of a pre-accession strategy for the aspirant member states of the Union, and the Commission Communication, adopted in March 1995, on the proposal for a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership

Specific Informational Instruments  are intended to establish, or re-orient, policy in a specific area. They include the declarations issued under the CFSP. Declarations are used by the Union as reactive instruments to respond to unfolding international events. The absence of a declaration can be of equal interest. The paucity of declarations about the Mediterranean basin, despite the intensity of the violence in Algeria, can be read as a lack of substantive agreement among the member states on an appropriate response to events. All of the institutions of the Union use Specific Informational Instruments which may be intended to be self-implementing or to accompany other instruments detailed below.

Procedural

The procedural dimension of the Community refers to the creation of a standing institutionalised relationship with a third party state or group of states. These may be established in regionalised form, as noted above, or constituted on a bilateral basis, as with relations with the United States. The EC/EU has constructed a network of agreements with states and groups of states. The development and deepening of the region-to-region dialogue by the Community in the late 1980s provided, in some analyses, the basis for characterising 'a new European identity in the international system' (Regelsberger). These analyses emphasise the increase in scope of the procedural instrument, especially during the mid- and late-1980s.

These agreements are founded on different articles of the Treaties, declarations, exchanges of letters or, in the case of international and regional organisations, the granting of membership or observer status. Alongside these agreements a political dialogue has also been established. This takes place in different fora (Association and Co-operation Councils, Ministerial meetings, meetings with the troika - the last, current, and next presidents of the Union - the Presidency and the Commission) and at differing intervals. A particular procedural instrument has been created for relations with the Europe Agreement countries: in addition to implementing the structured dialogue, defined in the Presidency Conclusions of the 1994 Essen meeting of the European Council, the Europe Agreements, signed by the Central and East European Countries (CEECs), contain an obligation to support the construction of an appropriate political dialogue with the Union.

Subsequently, the General Affairs Council approved an extension of the dialogue with the CEECs and provided for them to be able to associate with the EU in statements, démarches  and joint actions, and by co-ordinating within international organisations.

Transference

Transference instruments are the financial and technical assistance relationships that the Community uses to pursue policy. The budget of the EU is one of the positive transference  instruments available to the Union. Approximately 6 per cent of the Community budget for 1996 was allocated to external action and directed towards Central and Eastern Europe, the CIS states, and the states in the Mediterranean Basin, Asia, and Latin America. In addition, the member states provide financial and technical assistance financed by member state contributions to the European Development Fund (for Lomé states) and loans from the European Investment Bank. The creation of the European Community Humanitarian Office represents a proceduralisation of the positive transference process.

The negative transference  instrument of economic sanctions is also used by the Union. The use of economic sanctions was regularised under Article 228a of Treaty on European Union, which gave the CFSP the ability to use economic sanctions.

Overt

The overt dimension refers to the physical presence of the Community and its representatives outside the Community. This can be on a permanent basis: for example, the establishment of the external delegations of the Commission; or on a temporary basis: for instance, visits of the troika or the 'bi-cephalic troika' (the troika plus the Commission), or the dispatch of monitors and special representatives, to, for example, the Middle East and the Great Lakes. The Union has also created its own overt instrument in the form of its network of external delegations accredited to 112 countries.

The Presidency of the Union is explicitly granted responsibility for the implementation of the CFSP under the TEU, and the troika and bi-cephalic troika are also retained as other instruments at the disposal of the Union. The Presidency retains responsibility for the extensive network of political dialogue commitments that are the day-to-day substance of CFSP. The Commission and Commissioners perform a similar overt role, with the portfolios of Jacques Santer, Sir Leon Brittan, Hans van den Broek, Manuel Marin, Joao de Deus Pinheiro and Emma Bonino being the most public face of overt activity by the Commission.

Joint actions of the CFSP have created a number of new overt instruments: these include the convoying of aid in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the dispatch of observers to the Russian and South African elections, and the EU administration of Mostar. The Western European Union also represents a potential overt instrument for the EU under Article J.4.2 of the TEU.

Recent EC/EU-Russian Federation relations illustrate how a combination of he above instruments are deployed in the relationship with a third party state.The EC/EU used strategic informational instruments to detail a new strategy towards Russia in the Conclusions of the Madrid European Council in December 1995, and in the 'European Union Action Plan for Russia' of May 1996.

Under the CFSP specific informational instruments have also been utilised to respond to political crises in Russia. The deployment of these instruments can be indicative. The use of troops by the Russian Federation in Chechnya on 11 December 1994 did not generate a declaratory position by the Union until 18 January 1995. Speaking on the events in Chechnya the Belgium foreign minister, Frank Vandenbroucke, characterised the difficulties in formulating even this Union response by stating that 'European foreign policy is handicapped by the requirement for unanimity by member states for each decision'.

Procedural instruments deployed in EC/EU-Russian relations include the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with its attendant Cooperation Council, Cooperation Committee, and Inter-Parliamentary meetings.

Joint action with respect to the Russian elections was given effect through a Moscow-based European Union Observer Centre for the Russian elections on 12 December 1993. The centre was staffed by one representative of the Belgian Presidency, one from the European Parliament, and two from the Commission, as well as by Russian personnel. The Centre, which reported to the Council, was responsible for providing transport and communications assistance to the twenty-four observers sent by the European Parliament, and to monitors sent by the national parliaments and NGOs of the Member States. Furthermore, the Union employed the German-based NGO, the European Institute for the Media (EIM), to monitor election coverage.

Positive transference instruments deployed in EC/EU-Russia relations include the TACIS programme of technical assistance (631 million ecu from 1990 to 1994). The use of additional positive transference instruments includes food aid, humanitarian assistance through ECHO, and sectorally specific programmes such as the SYNERGY programme for the energy sector, the TEMPUS programme for higher education, and scientific co-operation through programmes such as COPERNICUS, PECO, and INTAS. Negative transference instruments include anti-dumping actions currently in force against 14 categories of goods.

Conclusion

This focus on the instruments used by the EC/EU to assert its identity provides only a limited insight into the full international role and significance of the EU. Moreover, the relative significance of the EU's various international relationships cannot be conveyed by describing the use of declarations, procedural instruments, and so on: the environment within which these instruments are deployed, the EU's position in that environment, and the process of policy formulation, are also of crucial significance. Nevertheless, a consideration of how these instruments are deployed is one way to capture a particular dimension of the international role of the EC/EU; it also refines and makes explicit assumptions that can inform future empirical work.

Richard Whitman is Lecturer in International Relations and Diplomacy at the University of Westminster. His new book, From Civilian Power to Superpower? The International Identity of the European Union, is published by Macmillan (1998).