European Union as a global actor?

Docente: Michal Onderco – European University Institute, Max Weber Fellow

Lingua: Inglese

European Union plays today a global actor – mediating negotiations with Iran, conducting anti-piracy missions in the Horn of Africa, assuring gas supplies for its members, promoting women’s rights in North Africa. But why does it conduct these missions and how does it do so? This lecture will introduce the students into European Union as a global actor. It will start with a brief discussion on why entities need foreign policy. Then it will move towards the European Union more specifically, discussing the challenges the European Union faced and how its foreign policy posture developed. Discussing historical roots and societal challenges, the discussion would then shift to discussing European Union’s tools to exert foreign policy abroad – both political and military – and how these tools are being used. The lesson will end with a discussion about challenges for the exercise of EU’s role abroad. In this section, we will discuss both internal weaknesses (need to find consensus, lack of resources) and external constraints (related to other actors).