Have You Heard of the EU? An Analysis of Global Images of the European Union

Abstract

The European Union (EU) is increasingly described as a global power. The growing number of articles analyzing the EU’s global role or the amount of post-graduate courses on EU foreign policy created in the past decade reinforce this notion. The EU has also been reflecting on its global ambitions: recent official documents and public statements make frequent reference to the Union’s ‘global responsibilities.’ According to this self-representation (largely endorsed by a relevant academic literature) the EU is not just a global power, but also a profoundly ‘different’ one. This ‘distinctiveness’ thesis suffers from two relevant shortcomings: it is deeply Eurocentric and permeated by the assumption that being ‘different’ means being a ‘better’ global actor. In an attempt to test this assumption, a number of analysts have started assessing whether the EU’s foreign policy is actually as distinctive (and effective) as claimed. Nevertheless, these studies limit themselves to analyzing the consistency and impact of EU policies and do not capture an important element of the relationship between the EU and the rest of the world, that is, how the EU as a global actor is perceived by non-European societies.