WGA 2020

Introduction

Question:
Briefly reflect about when and why a WGA has/hasn’t been introduced in your country. In what ways does a WGA in your country reflect the country’s specificities (e.g. in relation to its institutional and constitutional set-up)?

EU Expert

Steven Blockmans

Head, Europe in the World programme, CEPS, Brussels

Steven Blockmans is Head of the Europe in the World programme at the Centre for European Policy Research (CEPS), a Brussels-based thinktank, and Professor of EU External Relations Law and Governance at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Tough Love: the EU’s Relations with the Western Balkans (Asser Press, 2007) and The Obsolescence of the European Neighbourhood Policy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) in addition to having published widely on the EU’s integrated approach to external action. He served as the Leading Rapporteur of task forces on ‘More Union in European Defence’ chaired by Javier Solana (2015) and ‘Regroup and Reform: Ideas for a More Responsive and Effective European Union’ (2017). Steven is a frequent media commentator and regularly advises governments of countries in wider Europe and in Asia on their relations with the EU. Before joining CEPS in 2012, he was Head of Research at the Asser Institute, an international law centre based in The Hague. From 2010 to 2014, he was a special visiting professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Leuven. Steven holds a PhD in International Law from Leiden University.

Loes Debuysere

Researcher, Foreign Policy Unit, CEPS, Brussels

Loes Debuysere is a Researcher in the Foreign Policy Unit of the Centre for European Policy Research (CEPS), a Brussels-based thinktank. Her expertise and publications are situated at the intersections of conflict studies, democratisation theories and gender politics. She has worked extensively on the EU’s integrated approach to external conflict and crisis, for example as a Researcher in a H2020 project on the EU’s conflict sensitivity in external crisis response. Loes was previously a Schuman Trainee at the DG for External Policies of the European Parliament and holds a PhD in Conflict and Development Studies from the University of Ghent.

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To respond to security challenges posed by fragile states in its neighbourhood and beyond, the EU and its institutions have sought to develop ‘whole-of-governance’ approaches – as opposed to the ‘whole-of-government’ approaches of its member states (both referred to as WGAs) – to external conflicts and crises since the mid-1990s. The EU’s WGA policies have gradually evolved in parallel to those pioneered by Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK. Similarly, other multilateral actors (e.g. the UN, NATO and the OSCE) have been developing WGAs in parallel to the EU (Debuysere and Blockmans 2019a). This has inevitably led to conceptual exchanges and interactions among these organisations.

Concretely, the EU’s WGA policies have evolved from a minimal definition based on the security-development nexus to a full-fledged and ambitious ‘integrated approach to conflict and crisis’ (IA) that incorporates non-traditional security concepts. The rationale behind the IA is outlined in the EU’s Global Strategy (EUGS) issued in 2016 (EEAS 2016: 28):

“We increasingly observe fragile states breaking down in violent conflict. These crises, and the unspeakable violence and human suffering to which they give rise, threaten our shared vital interests. The EU will engage in a practical and principled way in peacebuilding, concentrating our efforts in surrounding regions to the east and south, while considering engagement further afield on a case-by-case basis. The EU will foster human security through an integrated approach.”

While policy documents of the past two decades have highlighted the EU’s commitment to an integrated approach, a few crucial questions remain unanswered: Has this commitment (words) truly become a working methodology (deeds)? And, if so, how has it been institutionalised and ‘operationalised’ at the headquarters level to increase the coherence of responses to external conflicts and crises? This chapter, which is based on a longer report (Debuysere and Blockmans 2019b), intends to investigate these questions.

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