The resilience turn in EU foreign policy

Abstract

The research was conducted by Nusrat Ismayilzada, a master student in the field of Area Studies at the Khazar University, and the topic of the research is “The resilience turn in EU foreign policy”. This thesis investigates the implementation of the European Union's (EU) foreign policy in the Eastern Partnership before and after the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) and examines if there has been a paradigm shift towards resilience in practice. There is an apparent disagreement in the previous literature on the EUGS' implications, and this paper argues more empirical study of the topic is needed. The aim of this research thereby is to empirically analyze whether a change in EU foreign policy toward a resilience paradigm has occurred in practice, following the introduction of the EUGS. The major source of data is the EU's annual action programmes for the Eastern Partnership countries, which are adopted to organize and manage external aid. The findings are mixed, with a modest tendency towards resilience-building, but no game-changing shift of paradigm is observed. I contend that the EUGS' resilience-building focus and approach of principled pragmatism should be viewed as an attempt by the EU to be honest about the foreign policy it had already been pursuing.