Understanding The Eu As A Good Global Actor

This timely book investigates the EU’s multi-faceted development as a global actor, unpacking its legal mission to be a ‘good’ actor as well as exploring the complexities of fulfilling this objective. It elicits critical reflections on the question of ‘goodness’ in EU external relations from descriptive, analytical and normative perspectives, and examines which metrics of actorness are useful in tackling this subject.

This book focuses on the European Union as an important actor in international relations and international political economy. The EU negotiates international economic agreements, represents Europe in international organizations, and is a major trading bloc and currency area. To what extent and under what conditions the EU can use its considerable economic power to assert its interests in the international arena is a relevant question for students, researchers and practitioners alike. To explore this question, the textbook introduces the concept of “actorness” and presents an overview of the actorness debate and theories used to explain actorness. In addition, it includes three empirical chapters on trade, finance and climate policy that apply various concepts and theories to study European actorness in the respective policy areas.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Is the European Union a unified actor in world politics? The world’s leading economic power is still struggling to find its role in shaping and maintaining global peace, free trade and commerce. How successful is the EU ́s Common Foreign and Security Policy and its institutions really?

This book provides a systematic collection of EU actors, EU policy and EU actions in global health. It answers key questions on governance of the EU and its policy processes. The book starts with an introduction to the EU as a global actor and continues to outline the historical development and the Treaty basis for health, including the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties. It also discusses the Commission's global health communication and the subsequent Council Conclusions on global health. Both documents define EU values in global health and identify the future priorities for global health action in the EU. Four of the five priorities are then described from the perspective of a different country experience. The book also considers the opportunities for research and provides an overview of the political, legal and financial instruments available to the EU. It also explores the global health architecture and processes within which the EU is acting, namely at the WHO, in the different multilateral organizations, and in global public health international treaties and regulations. Finally, the book addresses the importance of policy coherence at a national level and provides critical viewpoint on the EU as a global health actor.The book will assist practitioners working in policy making and international negotiations affecting health, as well as students and researchers, to create a better understanding of the European Union, its role in global health, and the uniqueness and specificity of the EU as a global health actor. It provides an overview of how the EU can act in global health and outlines the intersections of health and other sectors, as well as the instruments available to the EU to act effectively at a global level. The collection of contributions in this form and from this health policy perspective are not yet found elsewhere on the market.

This book examines how the European Union (EU) is perceived beyond its borders in the US; the Middle East: Israel, Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iran; Russia; China; India; Brazil and South Africa. The book also analyses the main perceptions of the EU in some key international institutions, including the World Bank; World Trade Organization, United Nations, African Union; and transnational actors, including non-Western media such as Al Jazeera. It seeks to provide a thorough analysis of the implications that these perceptions might have for the global role of the EU. By taking this approach and by providing both conceptual and empirical arguments, the volume provides an innovative perspective on the analysis of the EU as a global actor. It also strengthens a research agenda on the EU external image: an underdeveloped area of investigation in which the editors and the main contributors to this volume have played a pioneering role in the past few years. It will be of strong interest to academics and students of international politics, European studies and development studies.

This book contributes to the literature on the EU’s role in the international system by engaging with the debates on global actorness and mapping new conceptual and theoretical avenues to better understand how agency and power are exerted at the global and regional levels, in a context of increased contestation of the international liberal order. Organised around three main lines, the book first looks at how the EU positions itself internationally in different policy areas, providing a multi-dimensional reading of EU policies, instruments, and practices; secondly, it engages with the EU’s own perspective toward its regional contexts and with the perspectives of regional actors on the EU; and, thirdly, it explores non-European perspectives on EU actorness, as the way the EU is perceived by others in this system of contested leadership is central to how it is understood in terms of policies, instruments, and overall capability to lead and act as a global power.

This important collection, edited by Jenő Czuczai and Frederik Naert, covers the key areas of EU external relations law and broader institutional dimensions and principles of Union law. It does so under five headings - institutional dimensions; principles of Union law and legal theory; international law aspects; specific EU external policies (the Common Foreign and Security Policy; the Common Commercial Policy; and Justice and Home Affairs); and EU international agreements. Well-established academics and experienced practitioners from the different EU institutions offer a unique insight into EU practice and academic analysis of the most pertinent legal issues of the post-Lisbon legal environment of the EU, in particular in the external relations area. The contributors are: Paul Berman, Michael Bishop, Thérèse Blanchet, Sonja Boelaert, Marise Cremona, Jenő Czuczai, Álvaro de Elera, Bart Driessen, Frank Hoffmeister, Pieter-Jan Kuijper, Hubert Legal, Gilles Marhic, Stephan Marquardt, Frederik Naert, Esa Paasivirta, Ricardo Passos, Ingolf Pernice, Allan Rosas, Ivan Smyth, Christiaan Timmermans, and Dirk Wouters.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: B+ (1.7), University of Auckland, 115 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In the last years the European Union (EU) transformed the European gender regime towards gender equality thoroughly. This dissertation deals with the question of the EU's external influence on transforming societies. Is the external influence coherent with internal claims? Trade is the EU's most important external policy area. The EU is an economic giant based on the largest single market in the world. Thus the EU has power in and through trade. The EU makes increasingly the adaptation of normative standards a condition to access its market. Does the EU integrate also standards on gender equality? And does the EU transform gender regimes globally through trade? What impacts does the EU have on gender regimes? This dissertation examines gender impacts in the Sustainability Impact Assessments that show possible impacts of trade agreements between the EU and its partners. The analysis shows that gender is secondary to economic growth and not directed towards gender equality. As a consequence the EU does not use its power through trade and the coherence of internal and external efforts is questionable.