Does the EU have Moral Authority? A Critical (IR) Theory Assessment of the EU’s Responses to State Violence against Anti-Government Protests in Belarus and Uzbekistan

In its 2015 Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign And Security Policy, the European Union (EU) pledges to be a ‘responsible global stakeholder’ with the ambition to ‘act globally to address the root causes of conflict and poverty, and to champion the indivisibility and universality of human rights’ (EU Global Strategy 2016: 5-8, 18). Whilst recognising the EU’s increased global responsibilities, the Global Strategy remains silent on the sources of the EU’s responsibilities and on the grounds upon which the EU assumes the authority to act globally to address conflict and human rights emergencies. The question of whether and in how far the EU is authorised to assume global responsibilities is especially relevant in situations in which the EU assumes action without explicit United Nations (UN) authorization. This article introduces the analytical framework of EU Normative Action. Inspired by critical IR theory, the concept maps a number of criteria - the commitment to moral reason and discourse ethics – to assess if the EU qualifies as a moral authority. The framework is applied to two case studies: the EU’s response to the brutal crackdown of opposition protests following the 2010 presidential elections in Belarus, and the EU’s response to the massacre in the Uzbek town of Andijon following anti-government protests in May 2005. I conclude that the EU only partly qualifies as moral authority. Not only does it show a distinct reluctance to recognise its moral responsibilities vis-à-vis those whose human rights have been violated. The EU is also quick to abandon the commitment to discourse ethics and to revoke moral reason if its geopolitical interests are at stake.