The Politics of Coercion: Assessing the EU’s Use of Military and Economic

Instruments

CLARA PORTELA and CHIARA RUFFA

Forthcoming in: KE. Jorgensen, E. Drieskens, K. Laatikainen, B. Tonra and A.

Aarstad (eds) Handbook of European Foreign Policy, SAGE

Introduction

The European Union (EU) generally prides itself on the comprehensiveness of its
foreign policy toolbox. Thanks to the wealth of instruments of which it can avail
itself, it is well equipped to deal with a range of international challenges. Arguably,
the EU has made remarkable progress in endowing itself with a range of tools to
implement its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Yet the conditions under
which it is likely to select a particular set of instruments over another remain difficult
to explain (Karp and Karp, 2013). In specific areas of external action, the EU has
successfully managed to operate as a cohesive international actor, such as in its
response to the Iranian nuclear proliferation crisis; in others, the EU remains unable to
act coherently and effectively, as seen during the conflict that erupted in Libya in
early 2011. This chapter examines the politics of the two most coercive tools in the
EU’s toolbox: military operations and sanctions. The contrast between the uses of
these two different instruments of CFSP is apparent: whilst the Common Security and
Defence Policy (CSDP) was formulated with ambitious aims but is often seen as
ineffective, economic sanctions have traditionally retained a low profile but arguably
performed better.

The CSDP, known as the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) before the
Lisbon Treaty of 2007, was launched with fanfare in 1999. However, it has evolved
into a policy tool that is seldom employed in crisis situations where an urgent
response is required. Articulating a common European response has proved
particularly problematic where military action was the only viable option, usually
resulting in a failure to intervene. Still, the CSDP has specialised in civilian crisis
management, disaster response and training of foreign military and police forces.
Thanks to the CSDP, the EU is currently one of the leading global actors in civilian
crisis management and security sector reforms. The academic literature has
formulated ambitious aims for the CSDP, often providing a vision for its
development. Far-reaching aspirations have, however, soon reached their limits.

In contrast, the use of sanctions as an instrument of EU policy evolved with relatively

low visibility and was not accompanied by high expectations. Yet, it is nowadays one
of the most frequently used instruments of EU external action. A distinctly European
sanctions practice emerged in the early 1980s, and became gradually institutionalised,
especially following the Maastricht Treaty. It also grew in sophistication and
frequency. By the beginning of this century, EU member states routinely imposed
joint sanctions in the framework of the CFSP, having virtually relinquished the
practice of imposing sanctions unilaterally. The far-reaching sanctions package
imposed on Iran on account of its nuclear programme represents the culmination of a
political evolution in which the use of this instrument has matured. EU scholarship
has been slow in taking stock of the development of a common sanctions policy, and

1
in capturing its implications for the characterisation of the EU as an international
actor.

Sanctions and the use of force lie at the very heart of EU foreign policy as they add
‘substance’ to what is commonly regarded as a declaratory policy. The employment
of coercive instruments reveals the character of the EU as a foreign policy actor: by
exploring under which circumstances the EU employs its coercive instruments, and
when one instrument is chosen over the other, we can discern its foreign policy
preferences – and even the contours of its ‘grand strategy’ (Smith, 2011). From these
empirical observations, we can also deduce the geographical priorities of the EU, as
well as the degree of internal cohesion among member states. Moreover, by assessing
the efficacy of these tools, we can ascertain the amount of power that the EU is able
to leverage in international relations.

In the present chapter, we analyse the character of the EU as a foreign policy actor
through the lens of its coercive policies – expeditionary military operations and the
imposition of sanctions – and discuss the reading they have received by scholars. We
proceed in three steps. First, we review the academic debate on the politics of CSDP
and the main issues at stake. Second, we examine the literature on the politics behind
the imposition of sanctions. Finally, we conclude our discussion by contrasting the
two bodies of literature.

I. EU scholarship and the politics of military interventions

Evolution and trends in scholarly CSDP research

Even before the foundation of a Western European Union (WEU) in 1954, European
countries had envisaged a common defence policy. In the early 1950s, the proposed
treaty to establish a European Defence Community had high aspirations (including for
a common army and a European Minister of Defence) and was considered to be part
of the integration project. But the treaty to establish a European Defence Community,
signed in 1952, failed in 1954 due to its lack of endorsement by the French Assemblée
Nationale. This failure was a tremendous setback to the integration project, which had
to take a different route, and made defence a taboo in Europe for about four decades.
In 1948, a number of West-European countries had signed a mutual defence
agreement, the Brussels Treaty, which remained ‘dormant’ during the Cold War era
as it was quickly superseded by the signing of the Washington Treaty and the
formation of NATO. Only at the end of the Cold War the idea of a European-only
capacity for conflict management resurfaced, while the duty of territorial defence was
left to NATO. It was in the context of the early post-Cold war period that the WEU in
1992 defined a catalogue of military missions, the so-called ‘Petersberg tasks’, which
Europeans should be capable of performing in the absence of North-American
support.1 Those tasks were incorporated in the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999. The
ESDP/CSDP, launched in 1999 on the basis of a declaration issued at the Franco-
British summit in St. Malo, aimed at projecting EU security and defence policies
outside its borders. In 2003, the first ESDP missions were deployed in the Democratic
1
Petersberg tasks are defined as humanitarian and rescue tasks; peace-keeping tasks; tasks of combat
forces in crisis management, including peace-making. Source:
http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/petersberg_tasks_en.htm

2
Republic of Congo and in Bosnia Herzegovina (2003-2012). Only a few months later,
with the endorsement of the European Council, the High Representative for the CFSP,
then Javier Solana, released a European Security Strategy (ESS), the first document of
its kind, which presented the EU as a global security actor.

Since the early 1970s, the academic literature focusing on the potential of the EU as a
security actor set the tone for ambitious aspirations. In the 1970s and 1980s, two
opposing views defining the EU as an international actor emerged and had an impact
on security-related aspects as well. Francois Duchêne argued that the EU was deemed
to evolve into an organization of a completely different kind, a ‘civilian power’
(Duchêne, 1973). By contrast, Headley Bull expected the EU to develop into a hard
power (Bull, 1982). Duchêne’s legacy had a long-lasting effect and inspired a
generation of scholars and policy-makers. During those two decades, the foreign
policy culture taking shape explicitly excluded a military dimension and progressively
Bull’s IR perspective fell out of fashion. These two critical decades laid the
foundation for the state of the contemporary academic debate. EU’s CSDP became a
matter to be studied and discussed within the realm of EU studies only. IR scholars
progressively distanced themselves from the study of the EU as a coercive
international actor. Similarly, the subfield of International Relations called ‘security
studies’, devoted to the study of security, defence and military policy, has usually
neglected these issues. Leading American journals in the field only published articles
about CSDP exceptionally (Rosato, 2011). Academics working in the field of CSDP
and European security culture were publishing primarily in European journals, with a
specific focus on security. These included Security Dialogue and European Security,
or with a broader IR focus such as the European Journal of International Relations,
Cooperation and Conflict and Studia Diplomatica. Alternatively, the work on CSDP
is published in EU-interest journals, such as the Journal of Common Market Studies
and the European Foreign Affairs Review. Thus, CSDP is a popular domain among
EU studies scholars but a neglected one in security studies. Despite important
exceptions, these two fields do not converse and do not build on one another
(Zwolski, 2012; Merlingen, 2007; Krotz and Mahler, 2011). The remainder of this
section discusses why this gap exists and why it matters, and suggests that, while
CSDP scholarship should continue making a strong contribution to EU studies, it
would benefit from a better integration into the field of security studies.

CSDP: A research profile

By the time the end of the Cold War posed new challenges to the EU, the ‘civilian
power’ concept and the set of normative standards it entailed were well-established.
The Iraq/Kuwait war showed the persistence of conventional warfare in the
neighbourhood of the EU and the collapse of Yugoslavia evidenced the necessity to
intervene in the face of large-scale human rights violations. This was compounded by
concerns over the future role of the US in European security, at a time where its
military presence on the old continent was in progressive decline. The occasion was
ripe for the EU to become a different kind of actor, one that could employ military
force and do it differently from traditional powers (Bretherton and Vogler, 2006;
Kirchner and Sperling, 2007). Scholarly research was divided in terms of what kind of
actor the EU was. Three perspectives dominated the debate in the 90s and early
2000s. Some authors pointed at a capability-expectations gap which the EU simply
had to resolve by upgrading its capabilities (Hill, 1993); another approach, in

3
continuity with Duchêne, saw the EU as a different kind of actor, a ‘normative power’
(Manners, 2002; Sjursen, 2005). Other authors have suggested that the EU is in fact
behaving as a realist power (Hyde Price, 2006).

In the 1990s, the policy debate overall was quite optimistic on the way forward,
despite the obvious problems. While scholars questioned the EU’s ability to meet
those high expectations (Hill, 1993), some acknowledged the achievement and
innovative vision about the way forward (Gross and Juncos, 2011). Today, CSDP,
previously known as ESDP, aims at projecting the role of the EU’s security and
defence policies outside its borders. This enhanced role was first mentioned in the
Maastricht Treaty (1992), introduced after the Amsterdam Treaty and the St. Malo
Declaration (1998) and formalised at the European Council in Cologne in 1999. The
ESDP project was an ambitious one. At that time, many scholars and practitioners
foresaw a progressive decline of NATO and a complete takeover of CSDP at
managing and delivering the collective use of military force (Karp and Karp 2013:
350). Yet, those expectations were not met: the EU clearly did not become a
traditional security actor able to intervene militarily and on short notice (Toje,
2007:3). Illustratively, while the battle groups were ready since 2007, they were never
used in practice (Mawdsley and Kempin, 2013). The number and kinds of military
operations the EU has been involved in have been slim. Yet, with the ESDP, and even
more so after the introduction of the CSDP, the EU has endowed itself with the
necessary instruments to intervene.2 A complementary subfield of research has been
one scrutinizing CSDP operations and discussing those that have been successful at
specializing in smaller military training missions operations and civilian operations
(Gross and Juncos, 2011). Most scholarly works have been focusing precisely on
those missions that were deployed under the EU-flag (Tocci, 2007; Whitman, 2011;
Howorth, 2007; EUISS, 2009; Menon, 2009). Only few works discussed instances in
which the EU decided not to intervene, such as the case of Lebanon (Engberg, 2011).
This selection bias has created a profound divide between EU scholars and IR
scholars, with some exceptions. The former judge CSDP optimistically, the latter
perceive CSDP in a more nuanced and pessimistic way.

Avenues for future research

The following section discusses in greater detail specific aspects of CSDP literature
that would benefit from greater integration into a broader Security Studies debate. The
first two aspects mainly refer to how CSDP has been framed; the rest stems directly
from the politics of CSDP.

An element hindering cross-fertilization across Security Studies and EU studies has

been the differing emphases on various aspects of the use of military force. When
studying defence policies in security studies, there is a surprising lack of in-depth
analysis of ‘non-conventional’ operations, or ‘operations other than war’, such as
peace missions. Albeit implicitly, this might have excluded scholarship focusing on
CSDP – involved in ‘soft’ operations – from first-rate publishing venues in security
studies and international relations. On the other hand, on the EU side the absence of

2
For an overview of the available instruments:
http://www.eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/completed/index_en.htm

4
an explicit full spectrum of military capabilities makes it hard for scholars to develop
works that are analytically palatable to mainstream research in IR. Contrastingly,
CSDP’s flexibility and typologyof objectives could easily be absorbed by the ‘new
security studies’ or by ‘critical security studies’ more broadly. Considering that the
EU aspires to become an important security actor, it is puzzling to observe the
complete absence of fully fledged military operations involving ampler possibility for
the use of force than peacekeeping. When military options are discussed they need to
fall under one or more of the Petersberg tasks. The Petersberg mandate has been
portrayed the main reason why the EU is not able to deploy an intense kind of full
spectrum military operations. Yet, Petersberg tasks per se encompass a wide range of
military options, including possibilities for expeditionary and kinetic operations.3 Yet,
those options are rarely discussed in the academic literature. When, in 2006 and 2013
respectively, options for EU interventions in Lebanon and Mali were discussed one of
the key features was to make sure that they did not fall outside the Petersberg tasks.
There would be interesting synergies to explore conceptually and empirically by
stating upfront what Petersberg tasks actually stand for.

In addition, several elements make CSDP a unique kind of endeavour to study and it
is hard to develop it as an instance of some broader security-related phenomena. Of
the fourteen missions deployed, only EU NAVFOR Atalanta, deployed in the Indian
Ocean, is an operation that resembles a conventional military operation aimed at
protecting the EU’s interests (Biscop, 2010, Pacheco, 2012). As of April 2014, of the
fifteen missions CSDP deploys, ten deploy solely civilian personnel. 4 The five
remaining ones are: two training missions involving reforms and restructuring of the
Malian armed forces and the Somali armed forces (EUTM in Mali and EUTM in
Somalia), a long-standing stabilisation operation with strict regulations concerning the
use of force (EUFOR ALTHEA in Bosnia Herzegovina), an anti-piracy operation (EU
NAVFOR Atalanta) and the newly established EUFOR RCA to the Central African
Republic approved in January 2014. EUFOR RCA is a follow-on mission to
EUFOR/MINURCAT in Chad. Both EUFORs are pilot missions in respect of EU
military deployments under Chapter 7. The dominance of civilian operations and the
limited scope of the military ones has been consistent since the creation of CSDP
(Attinà and Irrera, 2010; Howorth, 2007). Since the beginning of the CSDP era, this
has been the dominant trend, with a very limited number of EU military missions
whose personnel operated under strict limitations, mainly in a peace building
capacity. While at times unique, CSDP dynamics do not hinder the possibility of
CSDP studies to connect to broader issues of military power and military intervention.
Therefore, further effort is needed to connect CSDP politics with broader non-EU
specific practices.

Four broad conditions influenced the development of academic scholarship on the EU

as a security actor separate from a broader security debate. The first factor is the
continued strength of trans-Atlanticism and NATO. Against most predictions, NATO
did not decline. On the contrary, with the Balkans crisis and after the events of 9/11 in
2001 it received momentum and it remains a strong and functioning security alliance

3
Kinetic operations involve possibilities for the use of lethal force.
4
A partial exception is EULEX in Kosovo, which is a civilian mission but also deploys uniformed and
armed police personnel.

5
(Rynning, 2013). The US partnership could not be underestimated particularly when it
comes to antiterrorist policies and NATO co-operation. Despite several mechanisms
ensuring information exchange and coordination, NATO remains the leading
multilateral security alliance (Coelmont and de Langlois, 2013). Co-existing with
such a strong alliance has obliged security studies scholars working on the EU to
carve out their specific niche, one that more naturally belongs to the EU field.

Secondly, as the European role as an international actor has emerged, its actions and
posture in the international system was best defined as a normative power, a different
kind of actor committed to spread norms and practices around the world and in its
neighbourhood in particular (Manners, 2006; Sjursen, 2005). This resulted in the
emergence of a dominant narrative that depicted the EU as a normative power with
strong civilian capacities, better competences in civilian crisis management areas and
a propensity to intervene only when normative standards were met (Tocci, 2007). As
a normative power, the EU would thus prioritise civilian crisis management over the
use of military force. Several scholars, by contrast, pointed out how EU behaviour
contained several realist components (Hyde-Price, 2006; Karp and Karp, 2013;
Pacheco, 2012). A recent strand of research has more recently suggested that the
normative-realist divide is a false dichotomy and has advocated moving beyond the
normative versus realist debate (Hyde-Price, 2013; Rynning, 2011, Ruffa, 2011:577).
While it is empirically clear that EU external policies contain both normative, liberal
and realist elements, the normative power narrative is a dominant one within EU
institutions and scholars and has led to a set of expectations that undermined its
connection to the broader debate about military capabilities. This might also have
hindered greater collaboration with military studies scholars, traditionally concerned
with the functioning of national military organisations.

Thirdly, ideational and material differences across member states are still a major
obstacle hindering cooperation within CSDP, which have also partially undermined
the development of an academic debate. EU countries still have profoundly different
preferences, sets of interests, strategic and military cultures, traditions and memory
and propensity for the use of force. While some European military powers, like the
UK and France are more interventionist, others like Germany and the Netherlands are
more cautious concerning military interventions. Some EU members explicitly rule
out the option of military intervention without a UN mandate. While some countries
prefer peacekeeping options (like Italy or Sweden), others sometimes undertake
kinetic interventions (like the UK or Denmark). While some countries are cautious to
intervene outside the European neighbourhood (Germany), others are keener on
having the EU intervene globally and in particular in their former sphere of influence
(France). The so-called ‘post-neutrals’ of Sweden, Finland, Ireland are torn between
their traditional non-alliance posture and their need to respond to a transformed
security environment. So while several scholars have been pointing at a European
strategic culture in the making, a common core set of assumptions and beliefs guiding
European use of force is hard to find (Meyers, 2006; Giegerich et al., 2013). The lack
of a single European strategic culture and persistent divisions amongst member states
explain the generally cautious approach: a propensity for low intensity joint
operations and the systematic avoidance of high intensity interventions as exemplified
by the lack of a unified intervention in Libya. In this specific strand, scholars working
on the emergence of a European strategic culture have borrowed concepts and
theories from broader IR debates, such as the one confronting Gray and Johnston in

6
the late 1990s (Gray and Johnston, 1999; Biava, 2011; Matlary, 2006; Baun, 2005;
Rynning, 2003; Van Ham, 2005; Meyer, 2006; Berenskoter, 2005). Yet, while they
make use of these concepts and theories, they do not propose any reformulation of
them and neither do they engage with the classical country-focused empirical works
on military and strategic cultures, thus confirming the persisting disconnect.

Fourthly, material capabilities and interoperability play a strong role in hindering

coordination at the EU level. Over the past fifteen years, the armed forces of most
European countries underwent a profound restructuring and downsizing. On the one
hand, the increasing budgetary cuts should make European countries more prone to
cooperate. On the other hand, the armed forces have a strong interest in maintaining
their autonomy and showing their utility as suggested by two interrelated phenomena:
inter-service rivalries and the tendency of armed forces in major European countries
to evolve into Special Forces to secure resource allocation (King, 2010). 5 These
bureaucratic dynamics are usually neglected by EU scholars and yet they are a
fundamental component to understand why EU military missions are difficult to
launch. The different interests, cultures and traditions at stake jeopardise the use of
coercion even when confronted by mass atrocities. As Bickerton pointed out, the
CSDP has evolved into a system that prioritises functionality over effectiveness
(Bickerton, 2011). It seems that academia has done the same: it has privileged a
narrow debate on CSDP over the broader theoretical discussion. Yet, scholarly debate
could give greater traction to actual CSDP politics by connecting them more closely
with the ongoing security studies debate.

II. EU scholarship and the politics of sanctions

Evolution and trends in scholarly sanctions research

Member states of the then European Community (EC) started developing a practice of
imposing joint sanctions already in the 1980s. At the onset, the rationale for joint
imposition of sanctions was linked to the existence of a common market: since
sanctions were, at the time, economic in nature, it was believed that if all member
states imposed identical measures and implemented them jointly rather than through
national legislation, distortions of the common market would be avoided and the
efficacy of the measures would improve (Koutrakos, 2001). Most studies analysing
sanctions imposed autonomously by the EU - i.e. not in implementation of sanctions
regimes mandated by the United Nations Security Council, but in the absence thereof
– were produced by legal scholarship, intrigued by the existence of a policy field that
affected both Community and member state competences. To this day, the imposition
of autonomous EU sanctions requires the adoption of a decision in the
intergovernmental framework of the CFSP and a separate legal instrument for its
implementation in the community realm. This feature, almost unique in the EU, has
instilled the interest of researchers studying the coherence of EU foreign policies
(Crawford, 2001; Poeschke 2008; Del Biondo, 2011; Portela and Raube, 2012;
Portela and Orbie, 2014).

5
The inter-service rivalry is exemplified by navies pushing for a greater role after over ten years of
military engagement in Afghanistan. To reinforce the point, much of the military engagement in
Afghanistan is fought by amphibious infantry, such as the British Royal Marines Commandos, while
many army line regiments undertake lighter peacekeeping duties in the same theatre.

7
The first autonomous sanctions regimes by the then EC were imposed in the early
1980s and were directed against the Soviet Union due to the imposition of martial law
in Poland and against Argentina following the Falklands war. However, member
states unpersuaded by the convenience of the sanctions efforts soon defected. It was
only after the end of the Cold War and the creation of the CFSP with the treaty of
Maastricht that the EU started to upgrade its sanctions policy, which gradually
increased in frequency and sophistication. By the first decade of the 21st century,
member states’ practice of imposing sanctions through the EU had almost all but
replaced individual practice (Jones, 2007). In the aftermath of the release of the ESS,
and once its CSFP sanctions policy was well established, the EU released a
programmatic document, Basic Principles for the Use of Restrictive Measures
(Sanctions), which announced that the EU would implement UN measures and
impose autonomous sanctions in support of human rights, democratic rule, the fight
against terrorism and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In reality, this
document came to confirm previous practice: the vast majority of EU sanctions
regimes had been imposed in response to human rights violations, often connected to
the interruption of the democratic process (Belarus, Myanmar, Nigeria, China,
Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe). There have also been a number of instances of sanctions
imposed on situations of armed conflict (Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Yugoslavia), in support of peace processes (Moldova), to combat terrorism (Libya)
and most recently, to prevent nuclear non-proliferation (Iran). It also confirmed the
use of targeted sanctions, measures designed to canalise harm on leaderships and
elites rather than inflicting harm on the population as a whole, typically consisting of
visa bans and assets freezes on blacklisted individuals, and arms embargoes.

The first political science works on the EU and sanctions appear from the late 1990s
onwards, most notably, the monograph ‘La dimension politique des relations
economiques extérieures des Communautes Européennes’ (de Wilde, 1998) and a
doctoral thesis which proved unusually influential despite remaining unpublished
‘Carrots or Sticks? EU and US reactions to human rights violations (1989-2000)’
(Hazelzet, 2001). Still, none of these items yet featured the word ‘sanctions’ in their
titles, instead highlighting the ‘political dimension of economic relations’ or
‘reactions to human rights violations’. Other works, taking the more discreet form of
book chapters, discussed issues such as the steady increase in EU sanctions practice to
the detriment of sanctions activity by individual member states (Jones, 2007), the
sophistication achieved in certain sanctions operations (de Vries, 2002), or sought to
explain inefficiencies in EU sanctions policies provoked by the complexity of its
institutional machinery (Buchet de Neuilly, 2003).

In the 2000s, EU sanctions research started to flourish: Researchers are concerned

with internal decision-making at the EU (Buchet de Neuilly, 2003; Poeschke, 2008),
the determinants or criteria of EU sanctions imposition (Hazelzet, 2001; Crawford,
2001; Portela, 2005; Del Biondo, 2011; Beaucillon, 2013), and the political efficacy
of the measures (Crawford, 2001; Portela, 2010). All in all, EU sanctions research is
still in its infancy, having attracted considerably less attention than the application of
political conditionality in the EU’s external relations (Fierro, 2003), a topic to which
it is intimately linked. For decades, mainstream sanctions scholarship ignored the
existence of European sanctions. In a refreshing departure from this trend, works
concerned with wider sanctions debates are starting to look at the EU as a case-study

8
alongside the UN (Eriksson, 2011) or other global senders of sanctions (Taylor,
2010).

EU sanctions research: A profile

The emerging research on EU sanctions is characterised by its compartmentalisation:

most research focuses on CFSP sanctions, while there is little attention to the freezing
of foreign aid because they fall under the EU’s development policy rather than on the
CFSP. Typically for sanctions scholarship, most works concentrate on case studies
such as Belarus, the China arms embargo, Burma/Myanmar or Iran. In the same vein,
the suspension of trade preferences on account of violations of labour standards or
human rights has not been studied in conjunction with other sanctions (Portela and
Orbie, 2014). EU sanctions research is also somewhat artificially disconnected from
the study of the application of EU conditionality, although sanctions practice is
closely linked to the promotion of human rights: indeed, failure to respect
conditionality provisions in agreements has often been a prelude to the imposition of
sanctions. Finally, the focus on legal questions surrounding the peculiarities of the
hybrid two-step procedure (Koutrakos, 2001), the relationship between EU sanctions
and international law (Beaucillon, 2013), and the compatibility of blacklists with the
protection of individual freedoms (Van Elsuwege, 2011) have taken precedence over
the interest in the political efficacy of the measures, a topic on which there is still little
scholarship available.

An agenda for future sanctions research

Interest in EU sanctions has increased in recent years, largely as a result of the

intensification of practice. Thus, it is likely that studies on EU sanctions will
proliferate in the near future. Avenues for further research are manifold.

At the empirical level, the consequences of the current distribution of competences

between EU and Member States, and of decision-making arrangements on sanctions,
are areas which could be fruitfully explored. The relationship between EU
autonomous practice, individual practice by the member states and the adoption of
supplementary sanctions in addition to UN measures, sometimes called ‘gold-
platting’ (Taylor, 2010) invites closer inspection. So far, there has been little attempt
to analyse the complex relationship between EU measures and UN sanctions. Also,
the determinants for the selection of sanctions targets and crafting of sanctions
strategies should be further examined in view of increasingly frequent imposition of
sanctions. First works conducted in this field can constitute useful points of departure
for further research (Hazelzet, 2001; Portela, 2005).

One of the most fertile areas offering untapped potential for research is the role of
sanctions imposition in defining the foreign policy identity of the EU. The framing of
coercive measures, or the reaction they elicited, have often developed into central
constitutive elements of the identity of regional organisations (Hellquist, 2014). So
far, studies have taken a predominantly rationalist perspective, while the application
of international sanctions lends itself excellently to non-rationalist approaches – in
particular with a view to exploring the role of identity in the international relations of
the EU, and processes of securitisation, ‘othering’, ostracism and stigmatisation along
the lines of recent work by Adler-Nissen (2014).

9
A most urgent step in the research agenda consists in attempting to integrate the
diversity of sanctions instruments into the same analysis, or in other words, to
examine them jointly (Portela, 2010). The most obvious example is the interruption of
development aid motivated by breaches of human rights or democratic principles.
Because these measures are routinely applied in the framework of Article 96 of the
ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, also called the Cotonou Agreement, they tend to be
ignored by sanctions researchers and analysed separately by development scholars
(Crawford, 2001; Del Biondo, 2011). This is an uneasy disconnect, particularly in
view of the fact that Article 96 sanctions and CFSP sanctions are sometimes imposed
simultaneously against the same target in order to address the same violation, e.g. in
Zimbabwe or Republic of Guinea. This mirrors the situation found in the suspension
of trade privileges under the Generalised System of Preferences (Portela and Orbie,
2014).

The relative neglect with which both the EU studies and international sanctions
literature has treated the sanctions policy of the EU, focusing instead solely on
military deployments (or lack thereof) has deprived research from a wealth of
empirical material which could advance the scholarly quest for ascertaining the
character of the EU as an global actor. Sanctions practice is particularly telling
because, unlike military missions, it was never accompanied by great expectations
and has still been successful, at least in maintaining member state unity (Jones, 2007).
Now that the abundance of sanctions practice as a distinctive realm of EU foreign
policy has been noticed, the next step is to integrate it into mainstream analysis of EU
action. This goes also – and especially – for theory. Most studies on EU sanctions
analyse this practice using theoretical tools belonging to the field of international
relations (Hazelzet, 2001; Portela, 2010; Eriksson, 2011) and have not been analysed
with the help of theories specific to European integration or European foreign policy.
So far, only some timid attempts have been made to connect sanctions policy to the
wider debates on the conceptualisation of the EU as an international actor, focusing
on the fit of this instrument with the notion of ‘normative power Europe’ (Brummer,
2009).

Relevance for related research fields

Our core knowledge of EU sanctions comes from the field of legal studies. Political
scientists only started discussing EU sanctions after a considerable amount of legal
scholarship had been produced (Koutrakos, 2001; Fierro, 2003). To our time, it offers
a source of documentation, especially as far as early sanctions episodes are
concerned. Consequently, the Political Science literature has been influenced by legal
scholarship in a number of ways. Notably, much of the scholarship has focused on the
human rights implications of blacklists (Van Elsuwege, 2011). Another example is, as
noted above, the fact that most political science works have respected the division
between CFSP sanctions, Article 96 suspensions and GSP withdrawals, even though
all these measures fit the definition of sanctions and differ from each other only in
their legal status. The hope is that the proliferation of political science accounts of
sanctions can, at some stage, serve as a source of inspiration to legal scholars and
related fields.

The findings of the nascent EU sanctions scholarship can be highly useful for the

10
study of political conditionality in the EU’s external relations and development co-
operation, fields to which it ought to be better connected. Finally, a glance at the
justifications advanced for the imposition of sanctions regimes indicate that EU
sanctions practice is part and parcel of its policy of democracy promotion, post-
conflict stabilisation and nuclear non-proliferation. Thus, it can provide fruitful
insights for the study of democratisation and, more in general, international security.

Conclusions

The analysis of the use of coercive instruments by the EU enhances our understanding
of the nature of the EU as a global actor. Michael E. Smith goes as far as claiming
that ‘now that the EU has initiated various independent policing/military
operations…we have a more complete picture than ever before of how the EU is
developing its grand strategy’ (Smith, 2011:147). Without attempting to summarise
the wealth of findings surveyed in this brief account, we can distil a few insights of
general interest.

Despite the fact that the two bodies of literature surveyed here examine instruments
that are similar in nature, i.e. coercive tools, they could hardly differ more from each
other. The absence of the military instrument had long been a definitional element of
the international relations of the EC/EU in the scholarly debate, tellingly embodied in
the term ‘civilian power’. Once the EU endowed itself with a crisis response
capability, researchers were compelled to revise what had become a fundamental
notion (Sjursen, 2005). As a result, a considerable amount of attention was devoted to
this question. At the same time, the acquisition of a military dimension raised great
expectations as to the global role of the EU, which were soon disappointed by the
EU’s failure to articulate a common military response to the Libyan crisis of 2011.
Still, the CSDP has found its ‘niche’ in civilian crisis management: because other
actors are either unprepared or unable to conduct such missions, or simply unpalatable
to the host country; the EU regards its role as filling a ‘security gap’ (Smith, 2011).

Paradoxically, sanctions research has followed almost the inverse evolution. Hardly
acknowledged by researchers – other than legal scholars -- during the first two
decades of its existence, literature dealing with EU sanctions only started to make its
appearance in the early 2000s. Since it was deprived of a flashy acronym and of any
fanfare, no expectations were coupled to its existence. And yet, it has become a solid
strand of foreign policy in which co-operation among member states has been
successful: they framed an increasing number of sanctions regimes, they have largely
complied with the imposed sanctions, and they have increasingly chosen to impose
sanctions through the CFSP rather than individually or through alternative fora. The
question of the efficacy of the applied measures, in terms of their ability to attain the
goals they pursue, is a separate issue requiring further investigation, particularly in
view of the divergent success rates identified in the literature (Brzoska, 2012).

What do the EU’s two most coercive policies reveal about the complex nature of the
organisation as an actor in international politics? The use of coercive instruments tells
an interesting story, as it evidences the boundaries of agreement among member
states. First of all, the instrument of sanctions and CFSP missions have been
employed in order to help articulate a common response amongst all member states,
maintain intra-European unity and present a unified stance vis-à-vis the recipient and

11
the rest of the international community. From the point of view of intra-European co-
ordination, progress made by the EU in articulating these policies has been no less
than impressive, particularly considering the speed at which they have evolved.
Except for occasional deviations, member states observed sanctions. By contrast, it
looks like efficacy considerations were relegated to a secondary place: the impact of
measures is not monitored; often, sanctions regimes remain in place for a decade or
more without bringing about any visible results, while the mandates of CSDP
missions have sometimes been criticised for their unambitious aims. From this
perspective, the employment of these instruments seems to respond to a desire to
establish a habit of common foreign policy practice in the first instance. Also, it
reflects regional priorities: both sanctions practice and CSDP operations have their
focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, with only a handful of missions in the Caucasus,
Eastern Europe, the Arab World and, more rarely, in Asia. In terms of the objectives
they pursue, CSDP missions and CFSP sanctions give reflection to the EU’s liberal
grand project, as they support objectives such as rule of law, human rights, democracy
and the peaceful resolution of disputes. The question of the fairness and consistence
of the EU in the selection of its sanctions targets remains controversial: some studies
found that the imposition of sanctions was linked to the gravity of the violation rather
than the identity of the target (Hazelzet, 2001), while others suggest that the EU
displays a certain proclivity to target weaker countries (Del Biondo, 2011; Portela and
Orbie, 2014).

Compared to the use of military force and sanctions by traditional powers, the EU’s
employment of these instruments is hardly coercive. When the EU is confronted with
a third country which ‘misbehaves’ or refuses to co-operate, it withdraws co-
operation – but does not necessarily attempt to coerce it into compliance. Because the
EU has subscribed to the notion of ‘targeted sanctions’ – arguably for good reason,
namely to avoid the suffering of the population -- it imposes mild measures such as
arms embargoes and visa bans, instead of making use of its considerable economic
muscle. Similarly, CSDP missions are routinely deployed with the consent of the host
country and with a UN authorisation. Indeed, as CSDP missions are often designed to
meet the needs of the host, they parallel development assistance efforts. Police
missions can be seen as an attempt to support or even empower, rather than coerce,
recipient governments. When a military mission is meant to impose a particular
outcome by force, the EU backs down as a collective entity, giving way to a
deployment under the UN, NATO, or individual powers such as France or the UK.
The intervention in Libya in 2011 is a case in point. Thus, when it comes to coercion
worthy of its name, the EU ‘vanishes’ and is replaced by individual powers. While
some authors have attempted to connect the EU’s use of coercive tools to notions like
‘normative power’ or otherwise, the key merit of the EU is to have developed a
practice of collective use of nominally coercive tools without pursuing coercive
purposes. Civilian or not, the EU largely remains a ‘non-coercive power’.
Nevertheless, the use of coercion helps the EU position itself as an actor in the
international system which supports or competes with other global powers (Taylor,
2010) and as promotes a distinctively liberal order (Smith, 2011).

12
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