THE EUROPEAN UNION’S FOREIGN POLICY IDENTITY - A case study of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans

Abstract: Key EU actors’ discourse in relation to other external actors in the EU enlargement process of the Western Balkans is analysed. The analysis is undertaken in order to gain insights into the EU’s current foreign policy identity. Debate over the EU’s external identity has intensified since the introduction of its Global Strategy for the Foreign and Security Policy. Recent literature has focused on the narrative changes in the EU’s identity linked with this strategy, and the often-conflicting and ambiguous implications these narrative changes have had for the EU’s external identity. The aim is to address the question of how the EU’s identity can be conceptualised today. A poststructuralist approach, which argues that foreign policy identity is constructed through relations, is deployed. An analytical framework with six categories of otherness was developed to analyse key EU actors’ discourse in relation to external actors in the Western Balkans. The analysis revealed that the discourse has strong references to self-interest and an emphasis on security and defence, which is in line with the EU’s priorities, as elaborated in its 2016 strategy. It can be concluded, therefore, that in the context analysed, the EU portrays itself as a pragmatic actor focused on its self-interests.