The mainstream scholarship assessing EU external action – “external governance”, “transformative power”, “value promotion” or “impact abroad” – frames the subject in terms of a success or a failure to achieve the intended effects, the latter usually defined against EU’s own declared objectives. Resting on a tacit assumption that EU engagement in third states is a good thing, the analyses of EU external action are generally framed in terms of “a positive impact or no impact” and tend to neglect the broader effects of EU policies. However, ambiguous developments on accounts of democracy and the rule of law in particular in the European neighbourhood raise a question of whether EU engagement in third states can actually change things in unintended and often unexpected ways. This paper brings unintended consequences into the analysis and offers an important addition to the models for assessing EU external action: the possible effects include not only a success or a failure to have an intended impact, but also having an unintended impact, whether positive or negative. Drawing on the broader literature on unintended consequences, the paper suggests a framework for analyzing unintended consequences of EU external action. It synthesizes and adapts to the EU context a typology of unintended consequences: who the impact is on (the actor who carried out the action or others), the value attached (desirable, undesirable or neutral), the relationship to the initial intention (whether it fulfills, frustrates or has no effect thereon), the modes of knowledgeability (unanticipated, anticipated-but-not-expected or expected unintended effects), temporal aspects (synchronic or diachronic), and strength of causal links to the action and the actor. By advocating a broader, more inclusive understanding of the possible effects of EU external action, this paper contributes to future research and policy.
