The European Union in Its International Environment

Abstract

The European Union and its foreign policy dimensions have generally been treated in sui generis terms, which increases the complexity of analysis in comparison to national foreign policy (Moravcsik, 1993). It is clear that coming to terms with the interaction of 15 not entirely converging policy agendas and one overarching institution is by no means an easy task. In the literature on the topic of the European Union in the international environment, as Richard Whitman observes in Chapter 4, no common ground has emerged. It appears that individual contributions in the literature seem to form parts of a mosaic with no clear pattern or consensus apparent.