Introduction: The EEAS as a Catalyst of Diplomatic Innovation

Abstract

This book focuses on one set of issues in a welter of European Union (EU) policy areas of contention: EU diplomacy. The implications of an emerging EU diplomacy for member-state diplomacies and for global diplomatic structures volens nolens affected by EU developments are immense.1 Yet they are arguably understood neither by European publics nor by the EU’s international partners. We wonder whether they are fully understood by EU actors — political and administrative — themselves. This situation is all the more challenging in a time of high turbulence in the EU’s neighbourhood and globally. There is a multitude of new threats emanating from an increasing number of fragile and imploded states as well as more traditional threats related to resurgence of geopolitics and the rise of revisionist great powers challenging the Western liberal democratic order. To use an often quoted metaphor, reforming the EU’s new diplomatic apparatus amidst this turbulence is like repairing a plane with the engine running and, we might add, under fire.