The EU’s Strategic Response to Human Rights Deterioration in Iran and Afghanistan

This thesis analyses the European Union’s external human rights policy through the lens of the persistent tension between normative ambition and structural constraint that shapes EU foreign action. Drawing on key academic debates on Normative Power Europe, the capabilities–expectations gap, and policy coherence, the study examines how the EU seeks to promote and protect human rights in contexts characterised by authoritarian governance, geopolitical sensitivity, and limited leverage. The thesis combines a systematic analysis of the EU’s legal and policy framework with two in-depth case studies, Iran and Afghanistan, which serve as particularly revealing sites for assessing the practical reach of EU human rights instruments. It first reconstructs the constitutional foundations and policy architecture of EU external human rights action, including Treaty obligations, strategic frameworks, action plans, and the evolving “human rights toolbox” encompassing diplomatic, legal, financial, and coercive measures. While this framework reflects a strong normative commitment and institutional sophistication, the analysis highlights enduring shortcomings related to prioritisation, coherence, and enforcement, which continue to limit its transformative potential. The case study on Iran illustrates how long-standing strategic prioritisation, especially around nuclear non-proliferation, has constrained the EU’s human rights engagement through practices of compartmentalisation and selective conditionality. The nationwide protests following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022 marked a critical turning point, exposing the limits of dialogue-based approaches and prompting a more assertive use of sanctions and political condemnation. Nevertheless, the EU’s response remains largely reactive and fragmented, relying on targeted restrictive measures and humanitarian assistance that signal normative opposition without fundamentally altering power relations on the ground. The Afghanistan case further underscores these dynamics in an even more constrained environment, where the absence of diplomatic recognition and the scale of humanitarian need have narrowed EU engagement primarily to humanitarian assistance and indirect political signalling. Together, the case studies demonstrate that EU human rights policy operates less as a coherent strategy of transformation than as a form of engagement under constraint. The thesis concludes that the EU’s external human rights action is neither merely symbolic nor fully effective. Rather, it represents a pattern of selective, incremental, and context-dependent engagement, shaped by competing strategic priorities, institutional fragmentation, and limited coercive capacity.