Keep on Talking! The Resilience of Multilateral Communications in EU Foreign Policy

Abstract

As argued in the introduction to this symposium, the current context of increased political uncertainty has triggered renewed interest in the importance of norms in international relations (Costa et. al. 2024). Most particularly, research has debated to what extent norms are resilient when faced with increasing contestation (Deitelhoff and Zimmermann, 2020; Wiener, 2014; Zimmermann, 2017). We contribute to this debate through an analysis of EU foreign policy. Weakly institutionalised and not legally enforceable, it is primarily held together through voluntary compliance with common norms. Scholars have argued that the rising contestation of foreign policy, particularly from populist right-wing governments, would likely threaten the EU's ability to negotiate – and enforce – decisions in the area of foreign policy (Balfour and Lehne, 2024, p. 6).

One of the first symptoms of such a development would be the fragmentation of multilateral communications between member states and the break-up of the ‘community of information’ that exists amongst the EU-27 (de Schoutheete, 1980). And yet, European diplomats have remained remarkably committed to a multilateral process of communication, despite the strong incentives to move to bilateral or ‘minilateral’ (Foster and Mosser, 2024; Jørgensen, 2011) communications, made all the easier by the flexibility and ‘shareability’ of digital communications (Adler-Nissen and Drieschova, 2019). In this article, we ask: how this can be? How can we account for the resilience of multilateral communications between member states?

Pointing to the normative quality of procedural norms as the main reason for member states' commitment to multilateralism, we fill a gap in the literature on EU foreign policy as well as in that on the resilience of norms in international relations. The literature on norms in EU foreign policy tends to concentrate on the role of substantive norms, whilst it considers procedural norms only from a functional perspective. We argue instead that procedural norms in the EU have sustained multilateralism during a profound exogenous shock such as the digitalisation of communications.

Our findings are based on quantitative data on COREU traffic made available by the General Secretariat of the Council, as well as eight interviews with European correspondents based in member states' Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs). The latter group can speak authoritatively on the multilateral nature of internal EU communications as they are in charge of receiving, sorting and transmitting messages from and to other capitals and EU institutions. 1

The article proceeds in two steps. First, we outline our theoretical argument. We start by distinguishing between procedural and substantive norms, highlighting that procedural norms are engrained in the backbone of any international organisation. We further clarify what the procedural norms within EU foreign policy are and what role they play. Suggesting a move away from an understanding of procedural norms as having merely a functional role in EU foreign policy, we analyse their normative qualities and suggest they reflect basic criteria for a ‘due process’. In the second part of the article, we show how the COREU system, which has been carrying multilateral communications amongst EC/EU member states since the 1970s, established a process of communication that followed a ‘due process’. We then show how member states remained committed to this multilateral form of communication, even when the transition to digital means of communication threatened to erode this multilateral communication system. In the concluding part of the article, we return to the question of the resilience of procedural norms in EU foreign policy, questioning whether they can still survive systematic contestation in the long term, and indicating avenues for further research.

The EU is an unorthodox actor in international affairs. Whilst it disposes of limited means of coercion, it can sustain a common policy that allows it to impact on world affairs. How is it possible that European states, with their different histories, experiences, traditions and alliances manage to agree on a common foreign policy? Why does this foreign policy hang together in the face of increasing contestation? If EU foreign policy were held together merely through compromises, it would be unstable, as member states would defect when presented with more attractive alternatives. Whilst EU foreign policy remains more fragile than the rest of the EU, as compliance with decisions is voluntary, it has been surprisingly robust (Risse, 2011; Sjursen, 2015). This observation has brought scholars, coming from different theoretical perspectives, to consider that EU foreign policy is held together through something more than a ‘[…] mutual agreement about [its] advantageousness or through the use of coercive power’ (Eriksen and Weigård, 1997, pp. 224–225). 2

Starting out in the late 1960s with informal meetings in which the foreign ministers of member states discussed foreign policy matters of common interest, a set of specific ways of making foreign policy together has gradually developed (Gstöhl and Schunz, 2021; Smith, 2004). Sceptics to the notion that the EU would ever develop an actual foreign policy, held that it would never be more than a ‘talking shop’ (Hill, 1993; Hyde-Price, 2006; Menon, 2013). Yet, the EU's response to Russia's war against Ukraine, amongst others through its sustained sanctions regime, testifies to the ability of member states to make collective decisions and act on them (Fiott, 2023). 3 We suggest that the ‘mere talk’ between member states is not necessarily ‘cheap talk’ and should be further scrutinised, as it is through talking and practical engagement that member states can arrive at a common understanding of what to do. Building on existing insights into how EU foreign policy hangs together (cf. Brøgger, 2023; Elgström and Smith, 2006; Tonra, 2003; Sjursen, 2015; Risse, 2011), we hold that it can be helpful to analyse how ‘talk’ and communications between states actually work, and to identify what kinds of procedural norms guide this communication.

The dedicated communication system developed within the CFSP well exemplifies the points above. The need not only for new information but also for the development of shared understandings in foreign affairs in-between meetings incentivized member states and EU institutions to develop the COREU network, short for CORrespondence EUropéenne. The COREU network is a cyphered sophisticated telex system that has been the backbone of official communications in the EU foreign policy system since 1973. As digital technologies evolved, however, the COREU system has proved to be often too slow and cumbersome for the ever-increasing pace of European diplomacy. Its use has thus declined dramatically (Bicchi and Lovato, 2023, p. 200). Yet, the rigidly multilateral format that the COREU dictates has continued to structure newer forms of EU foreign policy communications. Transposed in email and texting communications, the same structure of communications has remained despite the potentially infinite possibilities for fragmentation that email, and texting could deliver. Instead of using the transition to a different digital system to weaken multilateral practices, actors in the EU foreign policy system have replicated the original COREU system with newer digital means. Procedural rules and due process have de facto provided the multilateral blueprint around which the new digital means of communications have coalesced. In what follows, we will provide a brief overview of the COREU network's multilateral features, before moving to the transition of EU foreign policy communications to email and texting.

Created shortly after the institutionalization of European Political Cooperation in 1970, the COREU network aimed at continuing consultations and exchange of information between member states in-between meetings (Bicchi and Carta, 2011). It was an early example in which member states combined in-person and technologically mediated diplomatic exchanges. So-called European correspondents within each MFA were tasked with drafting summaries and monitoring the implementation of political co-operation. The COREU network soon expanded, not only circulating drafts, agendas and policy proposals but also allowing for negotiations and decision making via the silent assent procedure, according to which a proposal is adopted unless expressly vetoed by a participant in the system. It became a huge success, establishing a ‘community of practitioners’ sharing the practice of multilateral communication about EU foreign policy (Bicchi, 2011).

The COREU network has always been rigidly multilateral. The system works by simultaneously ‘joining up’ existing national and EU communication networks at a single point of contact (the European correspondent) for each actor. In layman's terms, each member state has two main computers for receiving communications, one in the capital and one in the Permanent Representation in Brussels, whereas the other EU participants (the EEAS, the European Commission and the Council's General Secretariat) have only one. Over this network, the overwhelming majority of messages are sent to all the participants simultaneously. Communications then travel further through in-house channels according to local rules, even though the system makes it physically impossible to forward a COREU message, for security reasons. As a result, any actor in the COREU network can send at any point in time a secure, confidential and official message to all other actors in the EU foreign policy system, who will receive it simultaneously. The network does allow for one-to-one messages between the EEAS and the General Secretariat or between the EEAS and a single member state, but this option has hardly ever been used. The network does not allow for two member states to communicate separately.

Through the COREU system, member states became committed to multilateral communication partly due to the technical features of the system. Yet, the sustainability of this practice could not be taken for granted. Multilateralism is often assumed to be a form of insurance policy for small and mid-range powers, allowing them to somehow curb the power of the larger and more (materially) powerful states. From the perspective of the largest member states, one might expect such insistence on multilateralism to be unwanted, though. When interests and values collide, it would be reasonable to expect member states to choose to turn to like-minded states, to establish minilateral communications or to turn to bilateral channels of communication to discuss matters of importance and relevance. This has happened in some substantive conversations on which there is no EU agreement, such as on the Middle East Peace Process (cf. Aggestam and Bicchi, 2019), and it could endanger multilateral communications in the EU foreign policy system.

At prima facie, this seems to explain the COREU's steep decline in relevance. Despite acquiring 10 new members in 2004, a further two in 2007 and one in 2013, and undergoing a further institutional change in the 2010 Lisbon Treaty, traffic on the COREU system plummeted to the level of the early 1980s. The lowest point was reached in 2021 with only 2013 messages, equivalent to less than 10 messages per day. The level of decline has been unequal, and particularly steep for member states, whereas the EEAS has become the main sender of COREU communications, issuing between a quarter to nearly half of messages issued in a year (Bicchi and Lovato, 2023, p. 17).

A further element that could have played against the COREU's multilateralism is the disruption caused by the increasing reliance on digital means. With the increasing digitalisation of communications worldwide, the EU foreign policy system has long since embraced new digital tools. Email took off in the 1990s (Hanna et al., 2015; Rudy, 1996), cell phones further enhanced its use in the 2000s (Friedman, 2005) and the emphasis on big data was further fuelled by increasing computing powers, as well as by expanding relevant of data (Kitchin, 2014). In the EU foreign policy system, this cast a shadow on the COREU network, with all its old-fashioned analogue technological constraints, its strict security measures and its incompatibility with most member states' portable devices, be they laptops or smartphones.

The 2000s could thus look as a ‘long goodbye’ to the well-established multilateral practices of agreeing key EU foreign policy outputs (such as declarations, papers and reports) via the COREU system. However, the system – or rather, its procedural backbone – displayed an unexpected resilience, rooted in due process' key characteristics of equal access to information and equal right to speak.

Digitalization could have been a critical juncture for multilateral communication in EU foreign policy-making. As the rigidly multilateral COREU network was replaced by the more flexible digital platforms of communications, member states could have chosen to disengage from the multilateral format, abandoning the medium and the format at the same time. However, rather than disengaging and moving their conversations to groups of like-minded states, member states remained in the multilateral room. This is puzzling, not least in a context where populist, right-wing governments increasingly block common decisions. It would be reasonable to expect that such contestation would increase engagement amongst like-minded member states.

Suggesting a theoretical account of this puzzle, we have made a twofold move beyond existing literature on EU foreign policy. First, we have suggested that the procedural, and not only the substantive, norms of EU foreign policy have been constitutive of EU foreign policy. Second, we have suggested a link between the robustness of EU foreign policy and the normative quality of its procedural norms. We have suggested that the procedural norms of EU foreign policy reflect core requirements of a ‘due process’. These requirements may be operationalized as equal right to participation, equal right to speak and equal access to information, as well as a commitment to constructive dialogue. These procedural norms were established through trial and error, rather than due to deliberate and explicit normative design. Yet, these practices came to mimic requirements to a due process, thus also providing them with legitimacy. This makes it more difficult for norm-abiding member states to justify abandoning them. Doing so would both entail reneging on what it means to be a member of the EU and a further weakening the legitimacy of the foreign policy that they have committed themselves to.

Considering the key role of multilateral communication in holding EU foreign policy together, our account of the transition from COREU to digital means of communication also helps provide a better understanding of the general puzzle of why EU foreign policy has, so far, remained relatively robust in spite of enhanced contestation.

As we have suggested, procedural norms may be the most important in term of sustaining a common foreign policy and have so far been subject to less contestation than the substantive norms. Two caveats may however be introduced. On the one hand, we cannot assume that the procedural norms of EU foreign policy will be forever immune to contestation of its substantive norms. After all, in democratic systems, procedural and substantive norms are to some extent mutually dependent. The normative quality of procedures ‘… has to be justified with reference to substantive reasons such as equality, liberty and autonomy’ (Peters, 2005, p. 101). Persistent contestations of the substantive norms of EU foreign policy are thus likely, at some point, also to affect the commitment to the procedural norms. In the absence of constitutional reforms, there is a risk that member states' willingness to uphold the core of these norms – the granting of equal rights to all member states – wither away and that multilateral communications gradually fragment.

On the other hand, a blind commitment to these procedures, which give parties veto power, may entail costs for the external legitimacy of EU foreign policy. The fact that all member states have an equal say in decisions makes it possible for a minority of states to hold its partners hostage. In a situation where decision-making is blocked, the norm abiding majority might feel compelled to soften their commitment to core substantive norms of EU foreign policy, in order to ensure agreement and protect the Union's capacity to deliver cohesive policy responses. Further research would however be required in order to find out to what extent, if at all, the commitment to substantive norms of EU foreign policy is already waning, under what circumstances, as well as how this connects with the Union's internal and external legitimacy.

Interview with European correspondent, videoconferencing platform, 11/06/2021.

Interview with European correspondent, videoconferencing platform, 07/06/2021.

Interview with European correspondent, videoconferencing platform, 15/06/2021.

Interview with European correspondent, videoconferencing platform, 02/07/2021.

Interview with European correspondent, phone, 15/07/2021.

Interview with European correspondent, videoconferencing platform, 26/07/2021.

Interview with European correspondent, videoconferencing platform, 30/07/2021.

Interview with European correspondent, videoconferencing platform, 20/09/2021.