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Introduction
While the worst of the euro crisis and the resulting
social and political crisis is behind us, in early 2018
the European Union’s external action has yet to re-
cover the desired profile and tempo. The recent back-
drop comprises a chaotic first year for the Trump
Administration in the United States, a United
Kingdom on the road to Brexit, and the rise of xeno-
phobic right-wing nationalism in many European
countries, including Germany. In the new situation,
the major powers are in a process of repositioning.
This is common to the isolationist United States of
Donald Trump; the revisionist Russia of Vladimir
Putin; and to the gradually expansionist China of Xi
Jinping. The global environment points to a change
of era marked by renationalisation, protectionism,
setbacks for liberal institutions and Western values
and, ultimately, the rise of “illiberal” regimes.
The new wave has triggered a renationalisation of
policies and, inevitably, a major crisis of multilateral-
ism on an international scale, a trend clearly running
counter to the project of European integration.
Europe has been confronted in particular with
President Trump’s “America First” policy, a combina-
tion of isolationism and unilateralism. In spite of that,
however, the EU at least maintains some minimum
levels of leadership, if we take into account the pro-
gress made in the areas of politics, security and de-
fence, or trade.
In these areas, there has been a certain cohesion
among the Member States in reaction to the isolation-
ist and protectionist shift of the United States. In paral-
lel with the field of institutional architecture, where in
its
White paper
of March 2017 Jean-Claude Juncker’s
Commission opted for a scenario of “doing more to-
gether,” in foreign policy too High Representative
Federica Mogherini has tried to promote common ac-
tion from the various partners on several fronts, from
European Defence to the advancement of the trade
agreements with Canada, Japan or Mexico, taking in
the dossiers on Cuba, Venezuela, Russia or Africa. Yet
without doubt, it is French President Emmanuel
Macron who has spearheaded European, as well as
French, external presence in this time and has tried to
fill the void left by the US withdrawal from the multi-
lateral system. Similarly, Macron has become the pub-
lic face of the Franco-German axis abroad, especially
during the period of deadlock in Germany from the
elections in September 2017 to the forming of a new
coalition government in March 2018.
The following is a summary of the most notable
features of the recent period in a selection of issues
relative to the EU’s external action, against the back-
Crisis of multilateralism and
the EU’s external action
Vicente Palacio