How Does the Council Legitimize the EU’s Response to International Crises? Emotion Discourse Analysis of the High Representative’s Communications on Russia’s War of Aggression

One of the most drastic changes of the Lisbon Treaty (2009) concerning the Presidency system has been in the area of EU external relations, in particular the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The Lisbon Treaty transferred the functions of the rotating presidency to the High Representative (HR), and in this way, diminished both the visibility and the role of the rotating presidency at the international level. In addition to these institutional changes, international crisis context since Lisbon has led the HR to increasingly take over some traditional roles of the rotating presidency, in particular the role of the external representation and foreign policy communication. The chapter approaches the HR’s external communication role from a political psychology perspective, and by analyzing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it demonstrates that, the HR has assumed a key role in legitimizing the EU’s response to the crisis through emotions. It concludes that the HR, through its communications, builds both a feeling culture for the EU member states and a power hierarchy in international relations.