The Europranization of national Foreign Policies: The Examples og germany and France within the Framework of Ukraine Crisis

This study aims to investigate the effects of foreign policy cooperation processes laid down at European Union (EU) level on national foreign policies. Vast majority of the current literature on European integration focus on the impacts of developments at EU level, supra-national institutionalization and policy-making processes on member states. However, as the domain of foreign policy, which has been included within the institutional framework of the EU with the Maastricht Treaty, is under the control of member states, it has been excluded from these investigations for a long time. Even though the foreign policy of EU has an intergovernmental character, the expansion of the foreign policy domain and the development of institutional structures after the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty have introduced considerable changes in the national foreign policies of member states. In this context, the main problematic of this study is to examine how and in what ways EU foreign policy, which was designed to be under the control of member states as a result of concerns related with sovereignty, unveil the changes in member states’ foreign policies. Providing an explanation for this problematic has become significant as national foreign policies have increasingly become the subject matter of foreign policy-making at EU level after the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. In order to account for this problematic, the concept of Europeanization, which examines the effects of the EU integration processes and developments on member states and suggests a different approach to the European integration, was employed. Moreover, this study addressed the Ukraine crisis, which posed a considerable threat to European peace and stability in the post-Cold War era, as a case study. The changes in the national foreign policies of two prominent members of the European Union, Germany and France, towards Russia within the course of Ukraine crisis were also examined in the context of the Europeanization concept. Consequently, it is seen that constant participation of member states in the foreign policy-making processes at EU level initiates significant changes in member states’ national foreign policies, even though it cannot cause a transformation of national foreign policies. While such change assists the growth of institutional structures at EU level, it also enables more binding decisions to be made for the Europeanization of member states’ national foreign policies. Thereby, national foreign policies of member states become more likely to be influenced by the foreign policy at EU level.