Claiming a more realistic and interest-driven approach to foreign policy, European Union (EU) Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has presented her team as a “geopolitical” commission. While the EU exerts a strong influence on its neighborhood when it is able to set incentives, its impact on states or regions is restricted if these incentives are missing. Here, only the combined political and economic clout of the member states can make a difference. The Eastern Mediterranean is a region where both shortcomings coincide: The EU cannot offer membership, and the member states do not speak with one voice. The result is the failure to perform “geopolitical actorness.” This weakness becomes apparent on different levels of conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean: the bilateral, the regional, and the international.

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