Normative Power Europe? The EU’s Embrace of the Responsibility to Protect in a Transitional International Order

This paper assesses the EU's engagement with the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) principle and considers the scope for its integration into the EU's activities and global strategy. We examine how the EU's engagement with R2P tests its normative leadership in the context of internal and external political challenges to its authority. We expand on previous studies of the EU's ‘failure to live by example’ regarding R2P by adding a missing analytical dimension – trends at the global level – and by suggesting an alternative explanation for the apparent ambivalence towards R2P in some parts of the EU. The EU has engaged with R2P – albeit labelled differently at times – more than many observers recognize, and despite bureaucratic resistance and diverging national approaches. Rather, the fundamental constraint on the EU's role in promoting R2P relates to a transitional international order in which the EU's normative traction is in decline, and European foreign policy elites are increasingly pragmatic and cautious.