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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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capacities and, in particular, to implement
Permanent Structured Cooperation during the
8th legislature.
The appointment of a new High Representative
for Foreign Affairs
Even before she took office, Federica Mogherini
(at the hearing in September 2014) had set out
her desire to strengthen European foreign and
security and defence policy, and there have
been plenty of indicators of her priorities during
the two and a half years since her appointment.
One sign of this was her decision, as both High
Representative and Vice-president of the
Commission, to move her office to the
Berlaymont building, which houses the other
commissioners. This was intended to emphasise
the fact that she had an EU-wide rather than an
inter-governmental mandate, part of a strategy
of correcting the tendency to treat the external
dimension of EU policy as an inter-governmen-
tal issue. Defence policy has been given a higher
profile through the appointment of Spain’s
Pedro Antonio Serrano de Haro as Deputy
Secretary General for Common Security and
Defence Policy.
Mogherini’s approach has been described as
one of extending boundaries and challenging
limits. A good example of this has been her fre-
quent attendance at the United Nations Security
Council to expand the mandate for the use of
force in Operation Sophia, designed to break
the business model of smugglers and people-
traffickers in the Mediterranean.
French activation of the mutual assistance
clause of art. 42.7
Following the Paris attacks of 13 November
2015, the French government unexpectedly in-
voked the mutual assistance clause contained in
article 42.7 TEU at the Foreign Affairs Council of
the European Union on 17 November 2015.
This means that the EU has become not just a
de jure
but a
de facto
defensive partnership, on
a par with the Atlantic Alliance. The problem,
though, is that French activation is being imple-
mented bilaterally by member states with scant
participation by EU institutions, and is having
very little practical impact. Despite this, it is of
great political importance.
For example, the preamble of European
Parliament resolution of 13 April 2016 states
that “the current activation of Article 42(7) TEU
should serve as a catalyst for unleashing the po-
tential of all the security- and defence-related
Treaty provisions”. This resolution was central to
the development of the new Global Strategy
presented two months later by the High
Representative.
Strategic autonomy in the Global Strategy
on Foreign and Security Policy
After lengthy negotiations and many delays, the
Global Strategy was approved, under the full
title “Shared Vision, Common Action: A
Stronger Europe. Global Strategy on Foreign
and Security Policy for the European Union”.
Negotiation took more than two years, and the
process involved the governments of member
states, members of the European Parliament
and an expert group comprising members
drawn from the different countries.