­Iran Crisis Exposes EU Foreign Policy Woes

Hello! Today is May 26, 2026, and here is your EU news summary for the week. Feel free to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues, and follow us on LinkedIn.

This week’s expert : Benoit Cormier is a Managing Director at Teneo in Brussels, specializing in EU and international affairs, defense, competition, and communications. He previously served as a French diplomat in Washington, Hong Kong, and Brussels, and worked for the World Bank and the European Commission.

Just over ten years ago, the Iran nuclear deal was a rare case on which the European Union could credibly claim to be a diplomatic power. The current crisis exposes the EU’s foreign policy shortcomings.

The JCPOA Was Europe’s High-Water Mark

The EU High Representatives for foreign affairs Catherine Ashton and then Federica Mogherini coordinated the participating European countries (France, Germany and the United Kingdom), known as the E3.

The E3+3 (China, Russia and the United States) negotiated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, one of the most complex non-proliferation deals ever concluded. The European External Action Service (EEAS) still references the JCPOA as the product of EU-led diplomacy.

The Iran nuclear deal worked because the EU had a clearly defined convening role. The High Representative was not just commenting on events but also chairing and mediating the European effort.

The EU’s leverage came from sanctions, market access, technical expertise and the fact that Washington, Moscow, Beijing and most importantly Tehran accepted Brussels as an honest broker. Iran saw Europe as diplomatically and culturally more capable of understanding its positions.

The Current Crisis Shows Europe’s on the Backseat

Fast forward to 2026 and the current Iran conflict tells a very different story.

Crucial military and diplomatic decisions are taken without Brussels. As became apparent during the talks between US and Chinese presidents Trump and Xi in recent days, Washington is relying on Beijing for the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and on Israel to support its military campaigns.

But Europe is nowhere to be found, and the current High Representative (and Vice-President of the European Commission), Kaja Kallas, has limited her ambitions for the EU to have a role “after the war” in regional stability.

After the US withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, Europe failed to preserve the agreement despite repeated attempts to keep it alive. The 2026 conflict underlines that decline: Europe remains normatively invested in non-proliferation, but it is no longer structurally central to dealmaking, mostly because it does not have much to offer.

Evacuation support through its Civil Protection Mechanism, and the possible adaptation of the Aspides naval mission are among the few options on the table. These are useful tools for coordination, not shaping the conflict’s trajectory.

Comitology Exposes Fault Lines Between EU Countries

EU “comitology”, the process by which Member States meet in working groups to agree on positions and oversee the implementation of EU law and spending, matters most on competencies that require unanimity, such as foreign policy.

In that field, geographical committees and the external relations working group, known as RELEX, as well as the Political and Security Committee (PSC) and COREPER, where national Ambassadors sit, are the most important actors.

With clear diplomatic divergences among major EU Member States in recent years, and in particular when it comes to the Middle East, that process is slower than usual, if not entirely grinding to a halt.

That means the EEAS, sitting between the Council and the Commission and built in a way that prioritize the collating of national positions rather than the development of an EU-wide diplomacy, cannot act without a clear mandate from all or almost all Member States.

In an Iran-type crisis, this institutional weakness limits the EEAS’s ability to turn diplomatic priorities into rapid, visible leverage.

The Commission Expanding Its Reach

The Iran file also reflects a broader shift: under the leadership of its current President Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission has increasingly occupied the space once associated with the EU’s High Representative.

Sanctions, defence industrial policy, energy security, economic security, external investment and crisis response are all areas where the Commission controls critical expertise and funding instruments, alongside Member States prerogatives.

This has fuelled tensions with Kaja Kallas, a former Estonian Prime Minister that the Brussels experts often consider primarily focused on the Russian threat and not interested in other topics or in a position to influence larger Member States to adapt their diplomatic priorities. By contrast, Ursula von der Leyen, a German political figure with a potential future in Berlin, has not shied away from expressing her views, on Israel and China for instance, sometimes to the ire of Member States large and small alike.

An EEAS Leadership Change Coming at a Difficult Time

The reported departure of EEAS Secretary General Belén Martínez Carbonell sharpens this impression of institutional fragility.

The Secretary General is the senior official responsible for the diplomatic service’s daily functioning, including staff, budgets and EU delegations, similar to European-wide embassies.

Her expected exit follows internal redistribution of powers under Kallas and comes amid broader friction between the EEAS and von der Leyen’s Commission, less than 18 months after her predecessor was forced out amid a fraud investigation.

Instability is problematic and the future Secretary General will have a lot to do with the EU facing precisely the kind of context that should require a strong diplomatic service: wars at its doors in Ukraine and Iran, dire economic and energy consequences, escalation risks, not to mention international tensions, including with its historical security partner, the United States.

Yet even a stronger EEAS would face a familiar problem: EU foreign policy still depends heavily on unanimity.

What To Watch Next

The Iran conflict is an institutional stress test for Europe. The EU has tools (sanctions, humanitarian support, even a naval mission) but lacks the integrated command structure and political unity to deploy them.

The comparison with the JCPOA is stark. In 2015, Europe had a seat at the table. In 2026, it is waiting in the hallway hoping to be useful after the main players have set the terms.

Whether the EU can reverse that depends on three things with different timelines: reshaping the EEAS after the current Secretary-General’s departure in the short term, agreeing on a clearer division of labour between the EEAS and Commission in the next couple of years, and re-thinking European diplomacy, maybe by somewhat limiting unanimity rules for foreign policy, which will take a lot of time and efforts.

CHINA • Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Lithuania have jointly circulated a paper calling for tougher EU trade defence measures against “systemic and structural industrial overcapacity”.

The paper proposes faster safeguard tariffs, stronger anti-circumvention powers, a new “resilience tool” for concentrated supply sources, and additional staffing to address an industry complaints backlog. It comes ahead of a key European Commission debate on China policy scheduled for May 29.

BREXIT • Keir Starmer’s EU-UK summit, expected in mid-July 2026, has been complicated by speculation about his leadership and a surprise debate in European capitals about whether a successor might seek to rejoin the EU.

The summit agenda includes a youth mobility scheme, removal of agrifood border checks, and deeper energy and defence ties. Meanwhile, Starmer’s delay of Russia sanctions has irritated Brussels, and EU diplomats warn that any future “rejoin” application would not restore Britain’s former opt-outs.

UKRAINE • President Zelenskyy has rejected German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s proposal to grant Ukraine “associate membership” of the EU, calling it “unfair” because it would leave Kyiv without voting rights.

In a letter to EU leaders, he argued that Ukraine deserves full and equal membership, noting that Orbán’s removal has created an opportunity for substantive progress on accession talks. Merz’s proposal would have given Ukraine non-voting participation in EU institutions.

• In a policy brief for the Centre for European Reform, Sander Tordoir and Brad Setser warn that a second “China shock” is squeezing Germany’s core industrial sectors and argue that Berlin and Brussels must strengthen EU trade defences and industrial policy to avoid deeper deindustrialisation.
• In an analysis for the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies, Johannes Jarlebring contends that full European sovereignty across AI, cloud and semiconductors is unrealistic given US scale advantages, and that the EU should instead pursue targeted “pockets” of technological autonomy.