Paina de seda drivers#
Socio-cultural values are implicit drivers of foreign policy. The broad concept of values has therefore been split into five categories.
Paina de seda series#
This study in the series ‘global trends in external policies’ seeks to contribute to the debate by investigating what is meant by ‘values’, whether their importance is on the wane and, if so, how this manifests itself, and how the European Union (EU) can respond to these trends.
Paina de seda driver#
There is a general perception in Western countries that the role of values as a foreign policy driver is currently on the decline. Respect for the right to information constitutes the very basis for both the EP’s role in democratic oversight and its ability to hold the Commission, which is increasingly active in the field of defence, to account. Despite the EP’s more limited involvement in relation to CSDP than to other policy fields, it cannot plausibly be construed so narrowly as to undermine the democratic principle applying to any decision-making process at the EU level – both ex ante and ex post. This in-depth analysis finds that, by virtue of the fundamental democratic principle underpinning the EU edifice, the EP undeniably has a role to play in the CSDP realm. In light of the rapidly growing scope of CSDP activities and initiatives, which are likely to further expand given the present geopolitical context, one might wonder whether the way in which parliamentary prerogatives set out in EU law are put into practice is compatible with the Union’s general principles of democracy, sincere cooperation, and institutional balance. Indeed, as the intergovernmental blueprint of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) remains unaltered, the EP’s role is limited. Yet, the formal role of the European Parliament (EP) has not been recalibrated to fit this new setting. In recent years, security and defence policy has become one of the most burgeoning fields of European cooperation, and the war in Ukraine is further accelerating this integration dynamic. Three short case studies of parliamentary diplomacy with the strong involvement of the European Parliament (the Parliamentary Conference on the World Trade Organization (WTO), delegations to the Conferences of Parties of climate change agreements and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly) show that enhancing multilateral democracy is not the only aim of parliamentary diplomacy and that each case reveals a different mix between the ‘parliamentary’ aspect of democratisation and the ‘diplomacy’ aspects of information exchange or influencing. These are mostly alliances of Western countries, which risks emphasising the differences between West and East or North and South. Fourthly, a lack of democracy at international level can also be countered by creating an ‘alliance of democracies’, aimed at multilateral cooperation between democratic countries rather than the democratisation of multilateral organisations. Thirdly, the organisation of national referenda on international decisions can be used by national governments or citizens’ initiatives to increase democratic legitimacy. Secondly, the involvement of civil society in international decision-making through protests, petitions, consultations or participation can also enhance democracy.
This is known as ‘parliamentary diplomacy’. An initial response to such a democratic deficit is the involvement of national parliaments in international decision-making. Apart from the European Union, no other multilateral organisation has a parliamentary body with the competence to block or amend its decisions, which indicates that there is a democratic deficit in these multilateral organisations. Several European countries have recently launched initiatives in support of multilateralism, in reaction to the increasingly unilateral behaviour of states undermining the existing rules-based international order. Multilateralism in the modern sense refers to an international mode of operation involving peaceful negotiations and diplomacy, also referred to as a ‘rules-based international order’ or ‘rules-based multilateralism’. This analysis looks into the complex relationship between two trends in international governance: an increase in multilateral arrangements between countries in order to govern internationally on the one hand, and a lack of democratic control over the decisions taken by multilateral organisations or conferences on the other.
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