Introduction: The European Union as a Diplomatic Actor

Abstract

The European Union’s (EU’s) nature, policies and impact as an international actor have been the subject of analytical scrutiny and a wide range of conceptual and empirical case studies since the early 1970s (Allen and Smith, 1990, 1998; Bretherton and Vogler, 2006; Cosgrove and Twitchett 1970; Galtung, 1973; Jupille and Caporaso 1998; Ginsberg, 2001, 1999; Hill, 1993; Koops, 2011; Sjöstedt, 1977). In parallel, scholars also began to reflect on the European Community’s (EC) activities, role and presence in international diplomacy and examined the EU’s emerging ‘diplomatic persona’ distinct from its own member states (Hill and Wallace, 1979, p. 47; see also Cosgrove and Twitchett, 1970, p. 44; Sjöstedt, 1977, p. 20). However, it was not until the late 1990s and early 2000s that the ‘EU as a diplomatic actor’ has become a more extensively studied subject in its own right (Bátora, 2005; Bruter, 1999; Duke, 2002; Keukeleire, 2003; Keukeleire et al., 2009). While these studies focused mostly on the EU’s newly created Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) – and hence on the EU’s ‘CFSP diplomacy’ (Keukeleire, 2003, p. 36) – the recent surge of interest in and studies of the EU as a diplomatic actor has been a result of the Treaty of Lisbon’s innovation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) (Bicchi, 2012; Carta and Duke, 2014; Duke, 2009; Smith, 2013; Spence, 2009; Vanhoonacker and Reslow, 2010) and the deliberate build-up of the EU’s diplomatic capacity in the post-Lisbon era (Carta, 2011, 2013; Hocking and Bátora, 2009; Mahncke and Gstohl, 2012; Neumann, 2011).KeywordsForeign PolicyLisbon TreatyCommon Market StudyDiplomatic ActorEuropean External Action ServiceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.