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The European Union's foreign policy is full of paradoxes. The Union aspires to be a powerful international actor without becoming a super-state. It hopes to prevent and manage conflicts, but refrains from acquiring the military means to do so. It embarks on the project of widening its borders, but continues its deepening project which makes the entrance hurdles for applicant countries ever higher. It wishes to maintain strong transatlantic links, but continues to build institutions that make the EU more independent from - if not competitive with - the United States. In this stimulating book, distinguished European and American intellectuals offer solutions to imperative but unanswered questions: How can the Union's enormous normative `power of attraction' combined with its operational weakness be explained? Can the Union remain a `civilian power' when coping with an `uncivilized' world? Can a European foreign policy get off the ground without prior emergence of a European demos? Are national policies within the Union increasingly convergent or divergent? And how can the Union's international performance be assessed?
Five years ago observers might have doubted that national foreign policies would continue to be of importance: it seemed inevitable that collective European positions were becoming ever more common and effective. Now the pendulum has swung back with a vengeance. The divided European responses to the prospect of war with Iraq in 1990-91, and to the war in the Balkans have made what happens in the national capitals seem divisive. The Actors in Europe's Foreign Policy is a timely survey of the interplay between the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy and the long-established national foreign policies of the Union's Member-States. The book contains a chapter on each country in the Union as well as a chapter on the United States in its role as the `thirteenth seat at the table'. There is also a chapter on the European Commission, whose role in the external relations of the Community steadily grew during the 1980's. This book will be invaluable for students and scholars of the European Union and of international politics. It will also be of great interest to practitioners in all countries concerned with Europe's role in international affairs.
The tension between the aim of creating sustainable multilateral region-building dynamics and the need to find more differentiated and flexible forms of cooperation has been ever-present in Euro-Mediterranean relations. The proliferation of different and partially overlapping initiatives in recent years – the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean – is a plain expression of this tension. The 2011 episodes of regime-change in the Arab world have once again placed the debate about differentiation in EU’s relations with Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Countries at the top of the Union’s foreign policy agenda. This book co...
This volume assesses the evolution of Spain's external relations during the 1990s, within and beyond Europe, and assesses the principal challenges facing the country at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The coincidence of several crucial global and European developments has had a profound effect on Spain. Adjustment of the economy and changes in foreign policy perspectives have become unavoidable. In turn, Spain, as an increasingly self-confident member of the EU, has itself become a significant actor in European-level developments. Spain's relationship with Europe and the wider world is increasingly balanced between new constraints and new opportunities for international influence.
The European Union's foreign policy and its international role are increasingly being contested both globally and at home. At the global level, a growing number of states are now challenging the Western-led liberal order defended by the EU. Large as well as smaller states are vying for more leeway to act out their own communitarian principles on and approaches to sovereignty, security and economic development. At the European level, a similar battle has begun over principles, values and institutions. The most vocal critics have been anti-globalization movements, developmental NGOs, and populist political parties at both extremes of the left-right political spectrum. This book, based on ten c...
Since the death of General Franco in 1975, Spain has emerged from relative isolation to play an active role in international affairs. Membership of the European Union and Nato have been keys to Spain's new prominence, although the country has also tried to build on its traditional "special relationships" with Latin America and the Arab world. This is the first thorough study of democratic Spain's re-emergence on the international scene. By focusing on the relationship between external relations and domestic policy the book makes an important contribution to the literature on democratisation, as well as showing how Spanish foreign policy evolved between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. While the ...
Examines how national foreign policies in the EU affect common EU positions in international politics.
A comprehensive study of the nexus between democratization and security in the Mediterranean, which are seen as essentially complementary yet threatened by political trends witnessed since the September 2001 attacks. Contributors from a variety of European and Mediterranean countries address the impact of a restructured security system, Europe's effort to establish an autonomous security and defence policy, and attempts among the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) to build regional security regimes.