Justice and EU Foreign Policy

Abstract

In this article I argue that the contemporary normative analysis of EU foreign policy is predominantly Kantian. This, I argue, is highly problematic, because at the heart of Kantian and neo-Kanitan accounts of ethics is a moral universalism that ought not to animate EU foreign policy unless that foreign policy desires to be neo-colonial. I set out why this is the case by developing an account of ethics derived from the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre’s account of ethics is both critical of Kantian universalism and provides a constructive alternative for evaluating moral behaviour and I use both sets of insights to evaluate neo-Kantianism in EU studies and liberal universalism as a suitable foundation for an ethical foreign policy of the EU.