Same Same but Different: Informal Groupings in EU Response to the 2014 Conflict and the 2022 War in Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing war has put security cooperation in Europe under strain. Among other institutional reactions within the EU, such pressure triggered the occurrence of member states’ differentiated engagement to integrated efforts through the establishment of informal groupings. By conceptualizing informal groupings as types of differentiated cooperation, the article assesses the influence of informal groups on EU foreign policy, unravels their interaction with EU institutions and the formal EU foreign policy-making procedures, and evaluates their implications for EU security governance. To do so, it carries out a comparative study of the occurrence of informal groupings in EU response to two major events occurring in EU’s Eastern Neighborhood: the 2014 conflict and Russa’s subsequent destabilization of Ukraine; and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing Russia-Ukraine war. The article relies on a triangulation of data gathered from official documents and original interviews with relevant EU and member states’ policy makers.