The EU’s Common Strategy on Russia: Four Lessons Learned About Consensus Decision–Making in Foreign Policy

Abstract: The article analyses and engages in a discussion the Union’s experiment with socalled CFSP common strategies, especially the one drafted on Russia (1999–2004). In the process, the origins and eventual outcomes of the concept are discussed. The main conclusion is that at all times the EU and its Member States should keep an eye on the wider external context within which their policies are played out and keep in mind that their actions might have unintended consequences. The same holds for scholars in reverse: when studying EU external policies, the internal setting and dynamics count and explain a lot and should be taken more fully into account in our studies.