Le Parlement européen et le rôle sécuritaire de l’UE à l’Est
(2014) 2e Colloque ISPOLE — Location: Louvain-la-Neuve (15.May.2014)
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- Since its inception, the European Parliament (EP) has seen its powers increase constantly. From 1957, when it was simply a consultative body of nationally appointed legislators to 2009 when the directly elected assembly become an equal co-legislator with the Council in most policy areas, every new treaty has increased the European Parliament's legislative power. But there remains one field where the EP has no little formal competences: foreign policy. This area is still firmly the prerogative of the member states and the Council. This does not however mean that the MEPs are content to ignore all foreign matters in their parliamentary sessions. On the contrary, international issues are frequently debated in the plenary and non-legislative resolutions on these subjects abound. The EP’s Foreign Affairs committee (AFET) is the most prestigious and sought after; and the budgetary competences that the EP possesses are frequently used to gain more leverage on the EU’s CFSP and CSDP decisions. Foreign policy and security issues are thus regularly discussed in the EP plenary. This does not necessarily lead to policy changes inside the EU but even though the EP is not a central actor in foreign policy, its opinions and views are important as they emanate from the EU’s moral “conscience” (David et al., 2013: 263) and carry all its normative weight. With regard to the EU’s foreign policy, one important issue is its capacity to solve or manage the many conflicts that exist on the Eastern periphery. The “frozen conflicts” of the Former Soviet Union are relics left over from the bipolar era, creating pockets of instability and “black holes” at the EU’s borders. To tackle those issues, the EU has deployed a vast array of instruments and put in place different policies in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Despite these efforts, these conflicts are no closer to a peaceful resolution than they were twenty years ago. This is due to numerous external factors over which the EU has no control (amongst which Russia) but it is assessed fairly harshly by the MEPs who call for a stronger EU action in the East. This study will analyse these perceptions by the different MEPs and the EP as whole, of the security role the EU should play in the frozen conflicts of the FSU. Using a grounded theory method to systematically analyse and constantly compare the content of relevant plenary debates, we will investigate to what extent the EU should become a security actor in its own right, as argued by the MEPs.
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Follebouckt, X. (2014). Le Parlement européen et le rôle sécuritaire de l’UE à l’Est. 2e Colloque ISPOLE, Louvain-la-Neuve. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/91111