EU foreign policy has always been more about ambition than reality. But today’s spiraling disunity among the bloc’s members makes even that ambition an aspiration of the past.

by Rosa Balfour

The precise date of the death of EU foreign policy is uncertain.

Perhaps it died in Gaza after October 7, 2023. The shambolic responses of EU and member states’ leaders in the days after Hamas’s terrorist attack on civilians in Israel revealed how profoundly and carelessly European countries had diverged from their decades-long semblance of unity on the Middle East Peace Process.

Upon reflection, October 7 was just another nail in the coffin of EU foreign policy. Perhaps one should look back to February 22, 2014, when the then president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich was ousted after months of Euromaidan protests. Russia responded by violating Ukraine’s sovereignty with the invasion of Donbas and the annexation of Crimea within the space of a month. European-led talks, policy responses, and sanctions aimed at ending the occupation of Donbas—and not reversing the annexation of Crimea—did not deter the Kremlin from invading Ukraine again exactly ten years later.

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