A European Feminist Foreign and Security Policy? Norm Contestation and Norm Negotiations in the European Parliament

In 2020, the European Parliament (ep) issued a resolution calling for all European Union (EU) Member States to adopt feminist foreign and security policies, and for a gender-transformative vision in the EU’s own external policy. Drawing on the literatures on negotiations and norm contestation, this article3 asks why the resolution was so progressive. It also asks how we can characterize and explain the nature of the negotiations leading to the resolution. The findings demonstrate a low level of contestation and negotiations mainly characterized by integrative strategies and solutions. The main opponents to the resolution, the populist radical right groups, were more or less absent from the negotiations but opposed by verbal contestation in plenum and through amendments to the text. We find that individual- and organizational level factors have high explanatory power: the gender equality-friendly institutional culture in the ep was further strengthened by the entrepreneurship of two committed rapporteurs.