This collection brings together leading scholars and practitioners to assess the processes, institutions and outcomes of the EU's collective diplomatic engagement in the fields of security, human rights, trade and finance and environmental politics. It analyzes successes and failures in the EU's search for global influence in the post-Lisbon era.

This work examines the role of the European Union as a distinct diplomatic actor. It focuses on the growing capacity of the EU to conduct external diplomatic relations with virtually every state and international organization. It explores the gradual institutional developments in the external competence of the EU and its ability to conduct consistent and coherent foreign policy and diplomacy. It argues that the initial strict separation between "high" and "low politics" foreign affairs resulted into substitution of political/diplomatic relations with economic relations and has significantly determined the contemporary character of European diplomacy. It also poses relevant questions arising from the major institutional novelties introduced by the Lisbon Treaty in the area of external representation, namely the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the External Action Service based broadly on the Commissions External Service.

This book examines the emergence, role and future of the EU as an actor in world politics. The core areas of European foreign policy are analysed both theoretically and empirically. This fully updated new edition explains and analyses the latest theoretical developments.

A very timely and topical volume concerned with the impact of the Lisbon Treaty on the European Union’s (EU) capacity to further develop a distinctive foreign policy in accordance with the various policy instruments necessary to fulfil its role as a global actor. This edited volume brings together a host of scholars in the fields of European Studies and International Relations whose contributions offer both innovative theoretical perspectives and new empirical insights. Overall, the book emphasizes the question of the EU’s evolving legitimacy and efficiency as a foreign policy and diplomatic actor on the regional and global stage. This shared concern is clearly reflected in the book’s three-pronged structure: Part 1 - the EU a controversial global political actor in an emergent multipolar world with contributions from A.Gamble, M.Telò and J.Howorth; Part 2 - After the Lisbon Treaty: the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the European External Action Service, includes chapters from C.Lequesne, C.Carta and H.Mayer; Part 3 - R.Gillespie, F.Ponjaert, G.Grevi, Z.Chen, H.Nakamura and U.Salma Bava assess the CFSP and the EU’s external relations in action. Foreword by S.E.M P. Vimont. As a result, the book is a useful and relevant contribution to European Union studies and International Relations’ research and teaching. It offers any interested party informed and comprehensive insights into EU foreign policy at a time when it seeks to undertake an increased role in World affairs and this despite economic crisis.

In The Ideas and Practices of the European Union’s Structural Antidiplomacy, Steffen Bay Rasmussen offers a comprehensive analysis of EU diplomacy that goes beyond the functioning of the European External Action Service and discusses the sui generis nature of the EU as a diplomatic actor, the forms of bilateral and multilateral representation as well as the actor identity, founding ideas and meta-practices of EU diplomacy. The book employs a novel theoretical approach that distinguishes the social structures of diplomacy from the practices and meta-practices of diplomacy. Comparing EU diplomacy to the two theoretically constructed ideal types of Westphalian diplomacy and utopian antidiplomacy, Steffen Bay Rasmussen concludes that the EU’s international agency constitutes a new form of diplomacy called structural antidiplomacy.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - International Politics - General and Theories, grade: 1.3, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, language: English, abstract: In the last decades the processes of globalization gave rise to economic interdependencies, leading to the increasing importance of economic diplomacy. The European Union is the largest trading block in the world and therefore exerts considerable power in international trade affairs. This thesis will pursue a theory-testing approach to analyze whether the EU is a realist or liberal actor in economic diplomacy. Through three case studies we come to a complex conclusion, that highlights the realist strategic thinking embodied in EU actions and the liberal set of tools that is used to achieve those. As economic diplomacy is designed to shape the international economic order, the European Union has an important set of tools at its hand. But how is it used? Is the EU the liberal powerhouse of the world, striving to increase trade regardless of strategic motives, promoting democracy and the global rise of capitalism with a view on human rights and labour rights? Or is the EU in fact a realist actor, that makes use of economic diplomacy to increase its power and to strengthen its own national security?