Working Group 3: Contestation

Our goals

EU foreign policy is normally seen as rooted in shared internal values and arrangements and as consisting in its externalization vis-à-vis third countries and multilateral institutions. This has made it difficult to conceive the EU as the venue for political conflict over fundamental normative questions of foreign policy. Yet, changing external realities – including the contestation of the international liberal order by emerging powers and the US – erode internal support for a liberal world order and multilateral global governance. Simultaneously, the normative “consensus” underpinning EU foreign policy is also being challenged from within, with the rise of right wing populism, Euroscepticism and a return to national solutions. The aim of this WG is therefore to explore the extent and the ways in which core norms that traditionally underpin EU foreign policy are being contested within the EU itself.