When the EU responds to a geopolitical crisis, who is actually making the decisions?
The founding treaties of the EU appear to provide a straightforward answer: the Commission, the Council, the Parliament, and, in foreign policy, the diplomatic agency known as the European External Action Service (EEAS).
Yet, recent discussions in Paris and Berlin over the future of the EU’s diplomatic service point to a deeper reality.
When it was revealed in the beginning of June that France and Germany were discussing possible reforms to the EEAS, the story appeared, at first glance, to be little more than an institutional dispute in Brussels. Yet beneath the debate lies a much broader question: are the European Union’s formal institutions still capable of responding to the challenges of today’s geopolitical environment?
According to a leaked French government discussion paper, Paris and Berlin are considering several reform options, criticising the EEAS for being too slow, fragmented, and burdened by overlapping responsibilities. Coordination between the Commission, the Council, and the EEAS is frequently criticised as inefficient, while the unanimity requirement in foreign policy continues to hinder rapid decision-making.
The EEAS itself is a formal institution, established under the EU’s legal framework and operating according to treaty-based rules. Yet the debate surrounding its future reveals something far more significant: the growing tension between an institutional architecture designed for consensus and a geopolitical environment increasingly defined by urgency, uncertainty, and crisis. It is within this context that decision-makers at the international level increasingly resort to informal governance mechanisms to get the job done.
A legal order built on formal rules
Rooted in its founding treaties, the EU is built on a rigid framework of legal rules designed to constrain the exercise of power and subject decision-making to political and judicial oversight.
This structure reflects the fundamental logic of international cooperation. The logic is simple: States are more willing to cooperate when everyone knows the rules. Uncertainty is reduced, and a stable environment that fosters cooperation and mutual trust is created.
Yet, no institutional framework can anticipate every future challenge.
The founding treaties were not drafted with a full-scale war on Europe’s borders, escalating geopolitical competition, or the rise of artificial intelligence in mind. As the environment changes, institutions are increasingly confronted with situations for which their original design may not be perfectly suited.
It is within this liminal space between formal rules and political reality that informal governance emerges.
What exactly is informal governance?
The term “informal governance” often evokes images of secret meetings, shady backroom deals, and political elites circumventing democratic procedures. Yet, the reality is considerably more nuanced.
Although there is no universally accepted definition, informal governance can be understood as methods of exercising governance outside formal institutional rules, ranging from informal ministerial meetings to ad hoc coalitions of states.
Far from being unique to the EU legal order, such a global phenomenon can be traced back to as early as the 1980s and has been on the rise since.
Within the EU, the Eurogroup is a classic example. An informal body created in 1997 where the finance ministers of countries that share the euro currency meet informally to coordinate on issues surrounding the euro. These discussions often shape decisions which are then officially adopted.
In recent decades, informal governance has surged not only within the European Union, but alongside it, especially within the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
One recent example includes the “Coalition of the Willing” established in March 2025. Classified as an informal coalition of 33 countries, it aims to support Ukraine’s Armed Forces, coordinating the “reassurance force” that could be deployed on Ukrainian soil and working on strengthening Europe’s own defence capabilities. It exists outside of any formal international organisation and has no treaty, permanent secretariat, or publicly available governing framework. It also lacks an official website and publishes little information about its activities. As a result, there is limited public visibility into its decision-making processes, ongoing activities, or the commitments made by participating states.
The Coalition of the Willing is far from unique. Other examples include the Airforce Capability Coalition for Ukraine, the F-16 Training Coalition, and the Grain from Ukraine initiative.
Almost all the Members participating in these arrangements are also part of the European Union. So why not solely rely on the existing avenues available under the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy? Such a choice reveals not only a growing reliance on informal governance to address such issues, but a shift away from formal decision-making within the EU itself.
What is causing the turn to informal governance?
The shift towards informal governance reflects three main realities.
First, the need for speed : formal EU procedures are often time-consuming. Reaching a unanimous agreement among twenty-seven member states can take months, particularly in sensitive policy areas. In moments of crisis, governments frequently seek mechanisms that allow them to act more rapidly than formal procedures permit.
Second, increasing complexity : contemporary challenges rarely fit neatly within existing institutional categories. Issues such as economic security, artificial intelligence, energy dependence, supply chain resilience, and hybrid warfare cut across multiple policy domains simultaneously. Informal arrangements can sometimes facilitate coordination where institutional boundaries create obstacles.
Third, political deadlock : foreign policy remains particularly vulnerable to paralysis because major decisions generally require unanimity among member states. As one diplomat recently observed in relation to the EEAS debate, the unanimity requirement may be a greater obstacle to effective action than institutional design itself.
There is also a deeper structural explanation.
Political scientist Mareike Kleine argues that treaties can never anticipate every future crisis. Informal arrangements therefore emerge as governments adapt to changing circumstances without abandoning cooperation.
The Return of Power Politics?
The resurgence of geopolitical competition has also accelerated the shift towards informal governance. Faced with war, economic coercion, and growing strategic rivalry, governments increasingly value flexibility over lengthy institutional procedures.
This inevitably raises another question: is informal governance just another fancy legal term hiding the true nature of such activities: exclusive clubs of more powerful states which allow them to bypass the rules?
It is certainly true that major member states such as France and Germany possess greater diplomatic capacity and political resources than smaller countries, allowing them to shape informal initiatives more easily.
As political scientist Randall Stone argues, powerful states frequently seek flexibility when formal institutions constrain what they perceive to be their vital interests.
This dynamic does not necessarily imply domination by larger states. However, it does illustrate how informal governance can redistribute influence within political systems.
Is informal governance a cause for concern?
Ask any jurist such a question, and they will likely respond with the slightly frustrating answer “it depends”. What can be discerned is that the rise of informal governance presents both opportunities and risks.
On the one hand, informal governance can, without a doubt, increase efficiency, facilitate rapid responses to crises, and help maintain cooperation under difficult circumstances. The European Union’s ability to react to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would arguably have been significantly weaker without a degree of flexibility and informal coordination.
On the other hand, informal governance raises important questions about democratic accountability.
One of the defining principles of the European legal order is that public authority should be traceable, justified, and subject to review. Accountability rests on the fact that citizens should be able to identify who made a decision, under what authority, and according to which procedures.
Informal governance greatly complicates this picture.
Influence may be exercised through diplomatic coordination, political understandings, non-binding “soft” law instruments, or networks of actors whose decisions do not always take the form of legally binding acts. As a result, many of these mechanisms fall outside the scope of review of the Court of Justice of the EU.
Further, informal governance is also often shrouded in mystery: confidentiality is key, especially when dealing with sensitive topics such as security policy. Such practices can fuel perceptions of opacity, elite decision-making, and democratic distance.
More fundamentally, this is not merely a question of transparency but of constitutional principle. In a democratic legal order, the exercise of public power derives its legitimacy not only from the quality of the outcomes it produces but also from the procedures through which decisions are made. When politically significant decisions are increasingly shaped through informal mechanisms, there is a risk that democratic oversight fails to keep pace with the exercise of authority. Public scrutiny becomes limited, making it increasingly difficult to grasp who actually made the decision as well as who should be held accountable.
What follows is a growing gap between influence and responsibility, inevitably raising concerns surrounding transparency, accountability, and even possible corruption. At the same time, attempting to fully codify informal governance would undermine the very flexibility that makes it attractive in the first place. Creating a parallel set of rules operating alongside the formal legal framework would blur the distinction between formal and informal authority and ultimately weaken the legitimacy of the EU’s legal order.
The dilemma is therefore not whether informal governance should exist. Modern governance systems are simply too complex to function entirely through rigid legal procedures. The real challenge lies in ensuring that flexibility does not come at the expense of democratic legitimacy.
The question raised by the EEAS debate is therefore not simply how Europe should organise its diplomatic service. It is whether a Union structured around a dense and highly formalised legal order can remain effective in an age of volatility.
Informal governance may offer flexibility where formal institutions struggle. But it also shifts the centre of gravity of European decision-making. Politically significant choices are increasingly shaped through informal avenues before official institutions approve or implement them.
When answering the question of who really governs Europe, the answer lies with not one institution, but a web of informal coalitions, diplomatic networks, and political understandings operating alongside the Union’s formal architecture. These arrangements certainly make Europe more agile. Despite this, unless they remain subject to meaningful transparency and democratic oversight, they risk creating a Europe where influence is exercised without responsibility, and where citizens know less and less about who is actually making decisions in their name.
Author: Chloë Garrier is a legal researcher and former member of the teaching faculty at Maastricht University. With an academic background in EU law and international trade law, her work focuses on the relationship between law, institutions, and geopolitics.