Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

We analyse how the European Union’s (EU) rather undefined institutional framework, the democratic deficit inherent in its institutions, and the hegemony of neoliberal prescriptions expressed in the concept of “financialisation” are limiting EU’s capacity of external action. These limitations are shifting the European foreign policy into a weak, uncoordinated, and instrumental (WUI) policy instrument. This is particularly observable in the MENA region, especially during and after the so called “Arab Spring”, which constitutes a powerful analytical framework to validate the WUI hypothesis. In order to understand the EU’s democratic deficit and financialisation, which are key in explaining the WUI hypothesis, we look at the sources of direct and indirect legitimation. The source of legitimation of the EU’s supremacy over national legal systems steams from the indirect legitimation of the Member States and the direct legitimation of the financial sector. This leaves European citizenship in a secondary and subordinate position that undermines the sources of democratic legitimacy in the EU, and that helps us to understand the EU’s secondary role in world conflicts and solutions.