The EU's External Action "Dialogues": A Consistent Foreign Policy Strategy?

The European Union (EU) is an example of actor in dialogue within itself and worldwide. In the EU’s frantic search of external political unity, dialogue, which the EU embeds in universal human values and in democratic principles, traces the relations with the “others”. This essay aims to discuss the strengths, limits and interactions of EU’s dialogues in the framework of its external action. In particular, it investigates whether and to what extent political dialogue, human rights dialogue and intercultural dialogue form part of a coherent foreign policy strategy in terms of both consistency with their value-paradigm of reference, and sharing of their objectives. This essay argues that, despite the constant efforts made by EU institutions over time to improve the scope of its dialogues and the participation of different types of actors therein, there is yet a substantial gap between the objectives formulated in EU documents and agreements and their application in dialogic practice. Moreover, although the three typologies of dialogue investigated share much in terms of objectives, actors and mechanisms, their level of integration and coordination within EU external action has significant room for improvement. In the era of planetary interdependence, of internationalisation of human rights, and of development of the global civil society, dialogues represent therefore a relevant instrument for the construction of a new international order based on human rights and democratic principles. The EU, however, needs to make a step further to integrate all these dialogues coherently and create the basis to enhance their effectiveness. To this end the essay suggests, inter alia, that the EU creates synergic partnerships in the various “dialogues”, with better division of labour among the actors involved to improve the “dialogues governance”, and increases the transparency of these dialogues and their outcomes to favour the assessment of their impact.