Abstract:
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine presented an unprecedented challenge to the European Union (EU). The invasion sent shock waves across the continent and necessitated an immediate response. Many suspected that the EU would fail in presenting a uniform response to the invasion due to internal divisions over contentious issues. However, despite these internal fractures, the EU managed to present an unprecedented unity and uniform foreign policy towards the Russian invasion. This EU response included severe political and economic sanctions on Russia, enormous financial, military, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, an open-door policy to refugees, and international mobilization which condemned this invasion. The thesis aims to contextualize and analytically explain this common response. How can the uniform and unequivocal response of the EU to the invasion be explained? How did the EU, with its 27 members and different agendas, speak in one voice regarding this issue? The thesis will strive to answer these intertwined questions. It will utilize the vast body of knowledge which exists on EU foreign policy toward Russia and historically look into these policies. It will then lay ahead the response in all its multi-dimensional aspects before analytically explaining why the EU was able to unexpectedly present a uniform common policy. It concludes that liberal institutional theory provides a robust explanation of the uniform EU response.
