From Conflict Management to Shielding EU Stability: How Syria’s Fragmentation Diverted the EU(FSP) from Action to Reaction

ABSTRACT

Analysing the role of the European Union (EU) in dealing with the Syrian crisis and the Assad regime exposes limitations in the development of a coherent and effective European foreign and security policy. The EU found itself reacting to external and internal pressures rather than acting on its own impetus. This was related to multiple factors: the fragmentation on the ground, associated with the challenges of a gradually increasing lack of consensus among member states and the proactive and competitive presence of external players, contributed to the failure of the EU’s strategies. Ultimately, the combination of these elements has led the EU to reduce its involvement in conflict resolution in favour of a greater focus on its own internal disputes.

KEYWORDS:

• fragmentation
• EU
• consensus
• terrorism
• migration

The civil war in Syria remains a significant challenge for the European Union (EU) in spite of the member states’ decreasing interest in the conflict due to the reorganisation of the Union’s priorities. Indeed, for the time being, the Russian war against Ukraine appears as the top priority on the EU’s international agenda. However, it is still relevant to explore the consequences of the Syrian crisis on EU institutions and member states, which this article considers as a single foreign policy ‘system’ – EU foreign and security policy (EUFSP) – to the extent that they have ostensibly pursued objectives largely shared by all EU member states.

As the conflict escalated over time, Syria has become increasingly fragmented with forces opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s regime multiplying and radicalising, thus exposing the EU to political rivalries among various players (Levallois et al. 2023). In addition, the involvement of external powers, especially Russia, Iran and Turkey, has inevitably resulted in geopolitical competition, adding to the fragmentation through their support for different belligerents with conflicting interests. To address the crisis and the challenges stemming from the war, the EU has mainly resorted to institutional, functional and diplomatic-coalitional measures (Alcaro and Dijkstra 2024, this Special Issue). Against this background, the range of EUFSP measures in Syria has included delegating responsibilities to EU bodies and specific member states, sanctions targeting the regime, investing in multilateral initiatives, and humanitarian and non-humanitarian assistance. However, it has been ultimately constrained by the effects of fragmentation, multipolar competition and intra-EU contestation. Consequently, the political and diplomatic role of the EU was severely diminished (Bouris and Nacrour 2018). Overall, the EU ended up playing a passive role in Syria, reacting to external and internal pressures rather than acting on its own initiative.

Hence, this article aims to explain how and why the EU became an irrelevant actor in Syria. It argues that Syria’s fragmentation has resulted in the emergence of numerous problems, including forced migration and terrorism, thereby directly affecting the EU’s hierarchisation of issues. Ultimately, the EU focused on protecting its domestic stability at the expense of conflict management, which gave Russia and Iran room for manoeuvre in supporting Assad’s regime. In order to address this evolution, the article first presents the constraining factors on the EUFSP in Syria and how their interaction has shaped the EU’s involvement. The chronological development of the article allows an analysis of the EU’s cohesive approach from 2011 to 2013 and a discussion of the crucial challenges that arose in 2013-15, reorienting the EU and its member states’ priorities regarding the conflict. Finally, the article tackles the events that occurred in Syria after 2016 and demonstrates how they highlight the EU’s irremediable failure in the country.

Reviewing the conceptual framework of the EUFSP towards Syria

The EU’s involvement in the Syrian conflict has been extensively discussed (Rygiel et al. 2016; Moret 2014; Asseburg 2020). The existing literature comprises both general analyses of the EU’s approach to the crisis and more specific studies on the particular strategies – with a focus on sanctions and migration – implemented by the Union since 2011.

Most research on the EU’s sanctions policy has questioned its efficiency while highlighting the Assad regime's ability to adapt (Seeberg 2014). An even more critical approach adopted by scholars contends that EU sanctions have contributed to the diminishing of the Union’s influence in Syria (Turkmani and Haid 2016). It has been pointed out that the EU and its member states maintained their traditional tools and frameworks – such as providing aid, setting up smart sanction systems, controlling exports, or pursuing balanced engagement – with few positive results. Indeed, the EU’s conflict prevention and crisis management strategies were weakened by the EU member states' approach to the Arab Spring. Simultaneously, the EU’s dependence on the United States (US) as well as its limited military capabilities were exposed. In this perspective, scholars emphasised that new engagement approaches could have been more appropriate to deal with the issues stemming from the region (Asseburg 2013).

In parallel, the 2015 refugee crisis, with Syria at the centre, and the associated EU’s migration policy, featured prominently in the literature. In particular, extensive research has been conducted on the 2016 EU-Turkey deal that limited inflows of refugees from Syria into EU territory (Rygiel et al. 2016; Batalla Adam 2017; Dagi 2020; Saatçioğlu 2021). While some studies acknowledge that the EU has never faced such a large and unexpected flow of war refugees from the Middle East prior to the Syrian crisis – thus exposing it to increasing costs and threats (Turkmani and Haid 2016) – other works are rather critical of the EU’s migration policies as well as of the Union’s role in the management of the Syrian civil war (Heisbourg 2015).

Overall, the literature seems to converge towards a consensus over the EU’s limited role in the Syrian civil war and presents it as an irrelevant actor (Pierini 2016). The reasons for this situation are discussed from several angles, with a prominent focus in the literature on multipolar competition (especially with Turkey, Iran and Russia) and internal contestation. While the EU’s diminished position has been partially explained by the lack of cohesiveness between its member states’ policies and geopolitical competition, scholars also consider that it has intrinsically been linked to the nature of the Syrian civil war itself and the fractured opposition to the Assad regime (Havlová 2015). It has already been demonstrated that fragmentation attracts opportunistic foreign interventions, fuelling insecurity in the country and thus hindering conflict resolution efforts, including by the EU (Stivachtis 2019).

As such, this article adds to the existing body of research¹ on the EU’s Syria policy by analysing the interplay of the three pivotal concepts around which this Special Issue revolves – internal contestation, multipolar competition and regional fragmentation. It aims to provide a better understanding of the root causes of the EU’s difficulties in developing a coherent and ultimately effective policy towards the Syrian civil war.

Internal contestation of EU foreign and security policy is spurred by a diverse array of domestic actors as well as by external players seeking to foster divisions among member states (Lovato 2021). In Syria, EU internal divisions – mainly between those who wanted to establish a technical dialogue with the regime on some specific issues and those who have been opposed to it due to a lack of trust towards the regime – have appeared as one of the reasons for the lack of an effective European policy (Amiel 2021; Bouris and Nacrour 2018). How to deal with the Assad regime has increasingly become a matter of contention, resulting in a diplomatic dilemma. This disagreement has been intensified by the different degrees of interest demonstrated by EU member states towards this issue, especially when the dialogue between member states and institutions moved away from heated topics for the EU such as the migration crisis.

Multipolar competition occurs when multiple major and/or regional powers approach crises and conflicts on the basis of contrasting views of regional (and global) orders (Alcaro 2018; De Coning and Peter 2019; Dandashly et al. 2021; Aydin-Düzgit and Noutcheva 2022). In Syria’s case, the country has progressively become a hotbed for regional and international rivalries, with external powers supporting different sides in the conflict, which has complicated the EU’s involvement. Russia, which has been militarily involved in the country since 2015, has consistently shielded the Assad regime from United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemnation, along with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Nahlawi 2019). Assad has also been supported by Iran and its main ally in Lebanon, the Shia armed group Hezbollah. On the other hand, alongside the EU, Turkey and Arab Gulf countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have backed the opposition.

Finally, the concept of regional fragmentation can be defined as the process by which state authority and regional rules of engagement erode or collapse altogether (Bakke et al. 2012; Bargués et al. 2020; Levallois et al. 2021; Börzel and Risse 2021; Stollenwerk et al. 2021). This constraint in Syria has reflected the region-wide fragmentation that has beset the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for decades, even if it has its own specificities in the country resulting from the strategic approach of external powers (Balanche 2010). The Syrian state has been characterised by a double failure linked to two prevalent dynamics: that is, the incapacity of the state to prevent the spread of sectarian divisions and its inability to control the territory (Hinnebusch 2018). In the case of fragmented territories such as Syria, the EU encounters difficulties in implementing and adapting its strategies due to a lack of legitimate interlocutors. As a result, the effectiveness of EUFSP is jeopardised (Levallois et al. 2021). Fragmentation has generated challenges – most notably increased migration flows – that became so domestically salient for some EU member states that they prioritised them over their efforts to manage conflicts or crises (Ibid). Amongst the three constraints analysed, fragmentation represents the focus point of this article as it was the most significant in hampering the EU from implementing effective actions in the Syrian crisis. However, both other constraints remain key and the analysis will demonstrate how their interplay with fragmentation helped shape both the crisis and the EU policy framework.

Building on the analysed effects of intra-EU contestation, multipolar competition and regional fragmentation on EUFSP, this article will integrate the set of EU mitigation strategies developed in the introductory paper of this Special Issue. These measures can be organised under the threefold typology defined as institutional, functional and diplomatic-coalitional.² Ultimately, discussing mitigation measures allows one to better grasp the EUFSP’s effectiveness. In the case of EUFSP, effectiveness can be framed as a combination of the coherence between the EU’s and its member states’ policies and of the potential impacts of those policies, notably on foreign grounds where they were implemented, measured against stated EU goals.

Syria’s fragmentation and its reshaping effects on the EUFSP

The EU’s approach towards the Syrian conflict from 2011 to 2013: finding common ground and engaging in multilateralisation

At the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, the EU and its member states seemed to find a degree of unity in agreeing on a policy of non-recognition of Assad, engaging in conflict resolution attempts based on multilateralisation and supporting the Syrian opposition.

The immediate reaction of the EU was to call for Assad to leave office due to his heavy-handed repression of what initially was a peaceful protest and his complete loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the Syrian people in its aftermath. Precise issues were targeted, giving shape to functional mitigation measures: bilateral cooperation programmes were suspended and the negotiations for an EU-Syria Association Agreement were frozen, in parallel with Syria’s withdrawal from the Union for the Mediterranean (European Commission 2023c). Additionally, to limit the brutal repression of Syrian demonstrators, the EU imposed a full arms embargo on the country in May 2011 (SIPRI 2013).

The intricacy of the situation also resulted in institutional measures being adopted, with member states delegating most responsibilities to the European External Action Service (EEAS). In August 2011, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, condemned, in a statement endorsed by the member states, the regime’s brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations as well as the imprisonment of protesters (European Commission 2011; Council of the EU 2011). Ashton announced the implementation of severe EU measures, leading to the withdrawal of European expatriates working in the country and, later on, to the closure of European delegations in Damascus. To strengthen functional measures previously adopted, a set of sanctions was then implemented, which consisted of the freezing of assets and the adoption of travel restrictions against individuals affiliated with or close to the regime, as well as a ban on telecommunications monitoring and interception equipment and certain other goods facilitating internal repression (IEMed 2015; Bouris and Nacrour 2018; European Parliament 2016). This was followed by a ban on investments in the country’s oil and energy infrastructure (EUR-Lex 2020). These measures were carried out in coordination with the US, which adopted a similar line of action. In the first phase of the conflict, the EU believed that the regime would quickly collapse and aimed at accelerating its downfall (Seeberg 2014; Kizilkan 2019).

In parallel with implementing the sanctions regime, the EU supported the opposition, recognised as the legitimate political representatives of the Syrian people by 120 states and organisations: the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, also known as the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), that was established in Doha in 2012. As part of a set of diplomatic-coalitional measures, this support was designed to increase the EU and its member states’ leverage, reinforcing their engagement in the conflict by supporting this coalition of like-minded partners. The EU provided assistance mainly through ad hoc strategic partnerships that aimed to organise the opposition to Assad in coordination with the US and some Arab allies. As foreign actors were prompted to intervene in the competition over Syria, the US, France and Turkey sponsored the creation of the ‘Friends of Syria’ forum in 2012. It involved several Western-aligned Arab countries as well as EU member states (and the EU itself) with the aim of providing support to the SOC and building consensus at the international level to effectively address the Syrian crisis (Danin 2012). This initiative was developed as a response to the reiterated opposition of Russia and the PRC to a UNSC draft resolution that called for the cessation of all violence on both sides and the protection of the Syrian people (UNSC 2012).

However, the Friends of Syria was unable to move towards a resolution of the conflict mainly for two reasons. First, it excluded influential external actors that were supporting the Assad regime – namely Russia and Iran. Second, member states failed – despite some attempts especially in the early phases of the conflict – to attain full alignment, within the Friends of Syria group, of other countries opposed to the Assad regime such as Turkey and Arab Gulf states. This was due to the fact that member states deemed coordination with Turkey problematic because it classified the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which operated in northeast Syria, as a terrorist organisation, as a result of Turkey’s support, alongside Arab Gulf countries, to groups considered by the EU as extremists (Idiz 2015). Years after its establishment, even though the number of participating countries has severely decreased and the influence of the group has remained limited, this forum still exists, advocating for the recognition of crimes perpetrated in Syria by Assad’s regime (SyriacPress 2022).

The lack of successful results in backing the opposition was and still is also linked to its fragmented nature. The authority of the SOC has been precarious, as it could not overcome divisions between exiled and local actors, a factor that has discouraged direct international military intervention or weaponry support (Phillips 2013). Moreover, the SOC’s leadership had been weakened by tensions between various internal factions regarding post-Assad Syria, ultimately leading to its isolation in the dynamics of the conflict (Alsarraj and Hoffman 2020). This situation undermined European efforts to build a national dialogue with the aim of achieving sustainable peace in Syria, while the opposition has been gradually disregarded by the West because it failed to represent a credible threat to Assad’s regime (Daou 2021).

The need to create adequate conditions for the establishment of a political dialogue in Syria prompted the EU to engage in further multilateralisation efforts – as a coalitional measure, the EU strengthened its engagement with UN initiatives. Building on a six-point plan aiming at a ceasefire proposed by UN and Arab League Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan in February 2012, the UN organised a peace conference in June with the aim of finding common ground for a political settlement between the opposition and the regime, which later resulted in the establishment of the so-called Geneva talks process (Besheer 2014; Collin 2018). A final Communiqué was issued stating that the parties involved in the conference agreed on the need for a “transitional government body with the full executive powers”, which could include members of the present government and of the opposition (UNSC 2012). The goals set in the Geneva Communiqué – namely, political transition and demilitarisation – convinced the EU that there was no military solution to the conflict, only a political one (Van Veen et al. 2021).

The Syrian opposition initially called for the implementation of Annan’s Communiqué (Alsarraj and Hoffman 2020). For the opposition, this meant that Assad should have been excluded from the newly established authority governing Syria, although complete regime change remained the opposition’s main ambition (Alsarraj and Hoffman 2020). This contributed to the regime’s refusal to implement the six-point plan associated with the Communiqué. The ceasefire was only partly implemented and fighting resumed on both sides in several areas by April 2012 (Dennis 2016). By August of the same year, following several vetoes by Russia and the PRC at the UNSC, and due to the lack of unity regarding actions in the Syrian crisis, Special Envoy Annan resigned (UN 2012; Amnesty International 2012). Lakhdar Brahimi became the new envoy and attempted to carry on his predecessor’s mission of stopping violence and human rights violations by promoting a peaceful solution to the crisis within the framework of the Geneva talks (Barnes-Dacey and Levy 2014; Middle East Eye 2015).

2013-15: the unfolding of a structured failure

Between 2013 and 2015, the EU started to focus on protecting itself from threats spilling over from the Syrian crisis rather than on solving it. Indeed, the EU’s priorities were progressively re-evaluated as disagreements among member states started to emerge regarding the management of the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), which became a major actor in Syria in 2014, and the control of migration flows. Conflict resolution became overshadowed by these challenges, reinforced by multipolar competition originating from the deeper involvement of Turkey, Russia and Iran. As a consequence, the EU’s influence was constrained and the scope and weight of its leverage were limited.

A major turning point for both the civil war and the EU’s policy was the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime against civilians in August 2013 in Goutha. As US President Barack Obama had set the use of these weapons on Syrian territory as a ‘red line’ for intervention, the Goutha massacre could have prompted a Western military deployment (White House 2012; Kodmani 2015). However, the inherent risks of another military involvement in the Middle East after the experience of Iraq (2003-11) and Libya (2011) made Congress, and the Obama Administration itself, wary of intervention. As a consequence, EU member states, notably France and the United Kingdom (UK), which had expressed support for retaliatory action against Assad, backed down in fear of internal and international consequences similar to those of the Iraq War (Rhodes 2018). While the dilemma between instigating retaliatory actions and avoiding any military involvement seemed insoluble for the West, Russia began diplomatic efforts, thus ending any chance of direct intervention against the regime (Lund 2017). This led to the unanimous adoption of UNSC Resolution 2118 in September 2013, aiming at the prohibition and elimination of Syrian chemical weapons (UNSC 2013; UN 2013). In the meantime, the US and Russia concluded a deal leading to the creation of the Joint Framework for the Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons. As a result, Syria joined the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in October and agreed to eliminate its chemical weapons programme and to host international inspectors. However, the implementation of the resolution did not go as planned. Syria did not comply with its obligations as UN-OPCW crews were attacked and evidence of chemical weapons stockpiles was found later (Deutsch 2017; Ward 2021; UNSC 2021). Notably, other chemical attacks occurred as well, including the Douma attack in 2018.³

On the other hand, the attack in Goutha instigated the second round of the Geneva talks in which the EU was involved. However, this turned out to be another unsuccessful attempt, mainly due to a lack of cohesion among Syrian opposition groups and Assad’s unwillingness to engage in serious political negotiations (The Guardian 2014; Collin 2018). Consequently, the UN and Arab League Special Envoy Brahimi resigned and was replaced by Staffan de Mistura in 2014 (UN 2014). Following his nomination, the UNSC adopted Resolution 2254 in December 2015 which proposed a negotiated political settlement, setting a roadmap for a peace process in Syria (UNSC 2015). Despite the commitment of the new envoy, the warring parties were unable to reach a compromise; the EU was part of the process throughout without positively influencing it. Eventually, the coalition collapsed mainly due to geopolitical clashes with Russia, Iran and even Arab countries. The interplay of multipolar competition and Syria’s fragmentation slowed the EU’s involvement in conflict management and the stakes were not high enough for the Union to invest the same number of resources as other international actors.

In parallel to the successive failures of multilateralisation attempts and the growing intensity of the conflict, ISIS penetrated Syria’s territories in 2014. In a few months, the terrorist organisation had taken advantage of Syria’s instability and controlled almost a third of the country (Wilson Center 2019). This shifted the attention of the international community and the EU on the need to fight radical extremism and reduced the focus on peace-making. In other words, resisting the Assad regime was gradually perceived as less important than fighting ISIS. The terrorist threat rose up the EU political agenda after a series of ISIS-claimed attacks in several member states – France, Belgium, Germany, Finland and the UK. Shifting the EU’s priorities, the strategies elaborated in an attempt to contain the threat simultaneously included institutional, functional and diplomatic/coalitional measures. Indeed, the emergence of the ISIS threat significantly changed the European strategy (Humud and Blanchard 2020): although the fight against terrorism is technically within the jurisdiction of individual member states, the EU now elaborated a common strategy. This took the form of a new institutional measure that involved informally delegating member states’ capabilities to EU bodies when it came to dealing with the terrorist threat. In 2015, the European Council issued a joint statement calling for the implementation of measures to ensure the security of citizens, prevent radicalisation, safeguard values and cooperate with international partners. Additionally, the EU established a list of individuals involved in terrorist acts as well as a set of sanctions applicable against ISIS and other terrorist groups (European Council 2015), marking the first step towards the prioritisation of what was perceived by EU member states as an internal security threat rather than involvement in conflict resolution in Syria (Council of the EU 2014). This type of selective engagement towards a particular issue represented the manifestation of a functional strategy. Finally, in a diplomatic/coalitional effort, fighting terrorism also took the form of a decision to join the US-led Global Coalition against ISIS, which, since its creation in September 2014, has gathered 86 members with the aim of countering the terrorist threat (The Global Coalition Against Daesh 2023). However, the military involvement of the Coalition in Syria had nothing to do with the Syrian uprising, provoking the anger and disappointment of the Syrian opposition, who felt abandoned.⁴

Coming on the heels of an increasing terrorist threat, the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015 further diverted the EU’s concerns away from conflict management. Over the next two years, over a million refugees (with Syrians being the largest group) trespassed into EU territory, particularly the Greek islands. The surge in asylum-seekers left no doubt over how the EU’s neighbourhood security directly affected its internal cohesion. EU member states’ concerns of potential crisis spillovers have led to diverging national approaches to the migration crisis, which have been linked to the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, especially in Syria. As of today, more than 6 million Syrians have fled their country, with almost 5 million in neighbouring countries and more than a million on European soil (UNHCR 2023). Consequently, as the EU focused on handling the refugee crisis while also attempting to manage the ISIS threat, its concerns relied less on conflict management than on protecting its own internal stability. Despite this, the EU still maintained its sanctions policies, although the prioritisation of other issues diminished their effectiveness.

In order to manage the migration crisis, two sets of functional measures were adopted by the EU through strategies of compartmentalisation and prioritisation. First, the reinforcement of the Madad Fund – a regional EU trust fund designed to support Syria’s neighbouring countries that had been established in 2014 (European Commission 2014). The fund principally supported Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, countries that have hosted Syrian migrants since the outbreak of the crisis. This tool – which came to an end in 2021 – allowed funds to be channelled from EU member states and partners through development projects in the fields of healthcare, education or facilities for displaced populations (European Commission 2022b).

To complement this development support, the EU increasingly focused on humanitarian assistance. Because the fragmented and highly competitive nature of the conflict hindered the EU’s leverage from a political point of view, the fact that humanitarian aid relies almost exclusively on its economic weight has made it one of the most appropriate ways for the EU to overcome its limited room for manoeuvre in managing the Syrian conflict (EEAS 2016). In doing so, the EU has resorted to compartmentalisation of humanitarian aid from the political discourse by delivering it continuously and impartially to all parts of Syria, despite the lack of progress in dialogue between the parties involved (European Commission 2023b). This strategy has enabled the EU to support the Syrian people and the country’s recovery without engaging in a normalisation process with the government. On the other hand, the provision of humanitarian aid in the Syrian crisis has exposed the shortcomings of this type of intervention: the fundamental role of humanitarian aid in the survival of Syrian people has rendered its instrumentalisation for political leverage impossible, meaning that the allocation of substantial resources did not automatically translate into EU bargaining power. Any attempt to use humanitarian aid as a dialogue channel has been considered by most EU members as an excessively direct engagement with the Assad regime (Wieland 2021).

As the refugee crisis unfolded, in March 2016 a deal was concluded with Turkey, as most of the migrants transited through this country’s territories to reach the EU. The deal – an expression of both selective engagement and the delegation of responsibilities to specific EU institutions and a limited core group of member states – was mostly brokered on behalf of the EU by German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Müller 2016; Mushaben 2017). She had a significant stake in supporting it as nearly one million asylum seekers had already arrived in Germany (Terry 2021). The deal aimed at limiting the influx of irregular migrants onto European soil and preventing the establishment of migratory routes through Turkey (Terry 2021; International Rescue Committee 2022). In exchange for Turkey’s assistance, the EU agreed to provide it with a total of 6 billion euros (mostly through cash transfers) from 2016 to 2025 to help host and support Syrian migrants (EUAA 2020). The deal did contribute to slowing down the flow of migrants but reduced the EU’s leverage on conflict management because it provided Turkey with increased bargaining power (Karolewski and Benedikter 2018; UNHCR 2023). The conclusion of the deal was even more critical when considering that the EU resorted to externalising part of the migration crisis management to Turkey, a country which was increasingly at odds with the Union’s democratic values. Consequently, in order to mitigate any spillovers of the crisis, the very core of the EU’s identity was eroded.

This externalisation strategy was mainly due to the EU’s need to manage its escalating internal dissensions over the management of Syrian refugees and their distribution among the member states’ territories. Starting from September 2015, some member states openly challenged and questioned the European Commission’s decision to define mandatory quotas regarding the relocation of refugees, which was devised to relieve the pressure from the countries of first entry into Europe – notably Greece and Italy (European Court of Auditors 2019). In May 2016, this resulted in the Commission establishing a financial penalty for the member states who refused refugees, although it was never applied (Gotev et al. 2016). Eventually, these conflicting views made it imperative for the EU to address its internal issues as a priority. Likewise, the massive flow of refugees from Syria prompted most EU governments to concentrate on how to put a brake on migrant inflows and further diverted the Union from addressing the roots of the migration crisis. This highlighted how a crisis originating from the fragmentation of a territory beyond EU borders directly destabilised internal EU dynamics.

2015-23: explaining the EU’s impasse in a fast-changing scenario

Despite the EU formulating a general, if rather unsuccessful, framework for action in 2017 – the EU’s Strategy for Syria (Council of the EU 2017) – its ability to be a major player in managing the conflict became irremediably compromised after 2015. This has been reinforced by the failure of the peace processes and recent events such as the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria, and the reintegration of Syria into the Arab League.

The last remaining attempts at multilateralisation of EUFSP towards Syria failed and diplomatic/coalitional measures appeared ultimately ineffective. First, Resolution 2254 was rejected both by the regime and the opposition: the regime’s representatives refused any of the resolution’s proposals and the opposition considered that the resolution was too vague when it came to Assad’s fate and the opposition’s representation (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies 2016). Despite this, the EU still heavily emphasised the resolution’s implementation in its strategic goals. As such, the Geneva talks held after 2015 produced no concrete results either (Bibbo 2022). The ninth round of talks, which were due to take place in July 2022 in Geneva, was postponed indefinitely since Assad deemed Switzerland a non-neutral territory due to its support for EU’s sanctions against Russia in relation to the Ukraine war – a war that may become the pretence for undermining peace attempts even further due to increasing tensions between Russia and the West (Lederer 2022; Rahima 2022).

Since 2015 Russia’s influence in Syria has grown. While it undermined the Geneva talks, Moscow launched the Astana process in January 2017 – bringing actors supporting opposite sides in the civil war, namely Turkey and Iran, to the negotiating table (France 24 2018). Whereas Iran and Russia have been the main allies of the Assad regime despite diverging interests (Grajewski 2021; Ziadeh 2017), Turkey was opposed to Assad but engaged in the process to oppose Western support to the Kurdish groups in Syria, who after 2014 were fighting ISIS on the West’s behalf. The EU supported the Kurdish enclaves in Syria through the provision of humanitarian aid and condemned Turkey’s operation against the local population from 2017 to 2019, while some of its member states – such as France – politically engaged with these groups along with the US (Kurda 2022). Against this backdrop, Russia arranged talks in Astana and Sochi between Damascus and rebel groups affiliated with Moscow, Tehran and Ankara with the main goal of negotiating a local ceasefire and creating de-escalation zones – principally in opposition-held areas of the country – rather than establishing a transitional authority as proposed at the Geneva talks (Bibbo 2021). This strategy fuelled Syria’s fragmentation by reinforcing territorial divisions between zones either under the control of the regime or the opposition and the Kurds. Notably, the UN-led peace process, which the EU had strongly supported, did not just stall but was gradually marginalised by the Astana framework, from which EU countries were utterly excluded (Levallois et al. 2023).

Aside from multilateralisation, the issue of normalisation of relations with Assad – which became a theoretically palatable proposition as the regime seemed to have gained the upper hand in the war and the EU’s attention was drawn to other crises, especially the Ukraine war – has been at the centre of most intra-EU disagreements. In March 2021, the EU High Representative, Josep Borrell, confirmed that “[w]ithout credible progress and as long as the repression continues, targeted EU sanctions on leading members and entities of the regime have been renewed” (Council of the EU 2021). While the EU’s official stance on this matter has not changed, once the regime proved ever more resilient, conflicting interests among member states have emerged (European Parliament 2021). In the past three years, a debate has been ongoing behind closed doors about whether to support or oppose a relative reintegration of the Assad regime into regional and international fora. Because Syria’s fragmentation is so extreme, certain EU countries – including Italy, Spain, Austria, and the Czech Republic – have reportedly started to support a so-called pragmatic approach that acknowledges the need for engagement with the Assad regime considering that the EU’s non-dialogue policy has failed. The idea behind this is that it is necessary to reengage with Assad in order to successfully deliver humanitarian aid and potentially reach national reconciliation – as a Western diplomat put it: “if it is necessary to speak to a tyrant to help Syrian people, why not”.⁵ A few EU countries, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece, acted upon these convictions and re-established diplomatic contacts with Assad in 2019 (Amiel 2021). But others – France, Germany and the Netherlands – contend that the EU strategy for Syria is still valid and that any sort of engagement would result in a cost-free re-legitimisation of the regime (Heydemann 2022). This division between member states is the expression of internal contestation as they appeared unable to agree on how to jointly proceed regarding the crisis and their position differs not only from each other but notably from the EU’s official position. Unless the EU has a unified policy or benchmark – underlining the need for both renewed functional and institutional measures that would allow the EU to prioritise this issue – on the normalisation issue, it is likely to be driven by developments on the ground and the policies of certain member states instead of pursuing its own.

In May 2023, Syria was reintegrated into the Arab League. After more than a decade of civil war and despite the absence of a path towards its resolution, this represents a substantial step towards the normalisation of the regime. This turnaround has been explained mostly by the will of Arab countries to contain the spillovers of the Syrian crisis and to counter drug trafficking (especially of Captagon, a highly addictive synthetic pill or tablet), a paramount concern in the region of which Syria had become the epicentre (Al Jazeera 2023). This decision has been deemed a political victory for the Assad regime and will undoubtedly have consequences for other stakeholders (Cafiero and Milliken 2023). The EU and the US do not possess any means of pressure that would enable concessions from the Assad regime nor sufficiently effective sanction policies. Indeed, their attempts to isolate Assad and weaken its regime seem to have been exhausted (Ibid). Given the West’s marginalised position, Russia’s and Iran’s constant support, and Syria’s regional reintegration, Assad seems to be able to maintain power. As such, the EU conflict management stance – waiting for political concessions and a potential transition – has basically become irrelevant (ISPI 2023; Sallon 2023).

Regarding the migration issue, if the deal brokered with Turkey has helped the EU to close its borders, the problem has anything but disappeared, with more than 13 million people having fled Syria or being displaced (UNHCR 2022). In 2022, despite the desperate need for a political solution and the lack of appropriate living conditions for Syrian people, some EU member states – such as Denmark – decided that parts of Syria were safe for the return of Syrian refugees, a statement that was not in line with the official position of most EU states and institutions (European Commission 2022a; Birkebaek and Skydsgaard 2023).

The controversy over the fate of Syrian asylum-holders in the EU was temporarily put aside after a massive earthquake struck north-western Syria in February 2023. This tragic event renewed both the need to receive refugees fleeing Syria and provide humanitarian aid. Additionally, it has dramatically demonstrated the problems linked with humanitarian aid and its delivery, especially since it affected a region mainly held by the opposition that was already in great need of humanitarian assistance (Kayyali 2023; Lund 2023). The Syrian government has appealed for international aid while simultaneously claiming that any assistance would have to rely on coordination with Damascus and would have to be delivered exclusively from within Syria. This reluctance to allow cross-border aid has been linked to the regime’s will to control and redistribute the aid according to its own interest. Despite this, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has urged the Security Council to authorise the opening of new cross-border aid points between Turkey and Syria (France 24 2023).

Eventually, the regime agreed on 13 February to the opening of three crossing points between Turkey and northwest Syria, thus allowing the UN to mobilise disaster-relief forces and to engage in on-site emergency operations (UN 2023). Once again, the EUFSP identified some functional measures as its strategy of choice. Coordinated by the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, 18 EU member states provided equipment – including food, clothes and medical supplies – while others deployed medical teams on the ground. The European Special Envoy to Syria, Dan Stoenescu, stated that the EU’s sanction regime did not impede the delivery of humanitarian aid and that the Union had raised more than 50 million euros to support the earthquake’s victims in Syria (Gebeily 2023; European Commission 2023a). The EU has closely cooperated with partners to respond to the crisis and reaffirmed its adherence to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. Eventually, this situation represents an additional challenge for the EU in its goal to ensure that the aid will be directed towards areas most in need. The management of the aftermath of the earthquake might become an additional factor in accentuating the fragmentation of the country between regime-controlled areas and territories under the opposition’s control, particularly in Idlib.

Conclusion

The EU’s policy towards Syria’s civil war unfolded in a challenging context profoundly shaped by the interplaying dynamics of state and regional fragmentation, intra-EU contestation and multipolar competition. Challenges emanating from Syria’s fragmentation were not only limited to difficulties in identifying which interlocutor could be considered reliable in the conflict, but also included the fight against ISIS and the migration crisis, as these rapidly became the main obstacles to an effective EU strategy in Syria.

In the first years of the conflict, the EU member states succeeded in finding common ground in opposing the Assad regime and attempting to support the Syrian opposition. This was reflected by the adoption of functional and institutional strategies, respectively the delegation of decisional power to the European institutions and the adoption of sanctions measures. Additionally, the EU tried to pursue conflict resolution by engaging, alongside the US and certain Arab countries, in an internationally organised consolidation of opposition forces and later by supporting a more inclusive UN process.

However, as the critical period of 2013-15 unfolded, the strategy developed by the EU progressively lost its consistency as other challenges emerged and internal dissensions multiplied, disrupting the EU’s approach. While the EU alongside the US shifted from conflict management to the fight against ISIS, the considerable support to Assad provided by Russia and Iran – to which EU member states were unable to counteract – undermined both peace endeavours and the EU’s ability to influence the regime. Apart from the failure of the EU’s involvement in multilateralisation attempts to resolve the conflict, the peak of the migration crisis in 2015 entirely diverted the Union towards border management, domestically a much more expedient priority than conflict resolution. The management of one of the worst humanitarian crises of the past decade and the absence of cohesiveness among member states mainly resulted in providing Turkey with further leverage over the EU, while granting actors such as Russia and Iran more leeway to intervene. Eventually, EU member states found common ground on the provision of both humanitarian and development aid. However, the never-resolved issue of whether this should have implied some form of selective engagement with the Assad regime, whose collaboration was instrumental for the distribution of aid to the civilian population, prevented EU member states from translating this intervention into political leverage.

Overall, after more than a decade of conflict, the performance of the EU’s mitigation measures can be described as largely unsuccessful when faced with challenges stemming from Syria’s fragmentation – which turned the EU into an irrelevant diplomatic actor in Syria despite being the primary humanitarian aid donor in the country and its region. The EU could not develop coherent and effective crisis responses because conflict management was not reconcilable with addressing its own internal dissensions by focusing on shielding its internal security. The EU’s relegation to a secondary role in the region was emphasised by both the earthquake and the reintegration of Syria into the Arab League. However, it is essential to highlight that this shift was not the result of the EU abandoning its goal of addressing the roots of the Syrian crisis: it was arguably the consequence of the structural limits of EUFSP mechanisms to generate unity on goals and synchronisation of policy tools as well as the geopolitical complexity that characterises this multifaceted conflict.

Acknowledgements

This article is an expanded and revised version of a report published within the JOINT project to which Can Kasapoğlu, Özlem Tür and Galip Dalay contributed. JOINT has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 959143 (www.jointproject.eu). This publication reflects only the view of the authors and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caterina Bedin

Caterina Bedin is a Research Fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS), Paris, France. Email: [email protected]

Tiffany Guendouz

Tiffany Guendouz is a Research Assistant at the FRS, Paris, France. Email: [email protected]

Agnès Levallois

Agnès Levallois is a Senior Research Fellow at the FRS, Paris, France.

Notes

1 This article mainly relies and draws on secondary sources (for example, books, journal articles, reviews, etc.) as the existing available materials on Syria’s crisis are dense. While not able to conduct fieldwork, we also drew on primary sources such as interviews that were conducted with informed consent for the purposes of this article and official documents from governmental bodies and international organisations in order to strengthen the article’s contribution.

2 The typology and the three types of mitigation measures are more precisely defined in the introductory article of this Special Issue (Alcaro and Dijkstra 2024, this Special Issue).

3 In 2018, chemical barrels were dropped in Douma in order to push back opposition forces, killing more than 40 people. Despite the fact that the regime denied its involvement in this attack, the OPCW stated that evidence attested to its responsibility in the attacks (BBC 2023).

4 Interview with a Western diplomat in Beirut, October 2022

5 Interview with a Western diplomat in Beirut, October 2022