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European Union prioritise and pursue global or regional foreign policy
objectives in the coming period? The answer to this question shall define its
external action towards its neighbours and global powers.
Nevertheless, even if this was sorted out, it remains unclear how the EU
wants to achieve its external objectives: through its traditional role as a
champion of effective multilateralism; or by investing more in its strategic
autonomy and bilateral relations with third countries through relational and
structural foreign policies (see Keukeleire and Delreux 2014, 27-30), including
hard and soft power means; or via a new combination of both? And even if
there was a clear answer to this, an important challenge remains the scope
and efficiency of external policy instruments at its disposal, which remain
limited for the time being.
Without solving these dilemmas, the Union will continue to be perceived
as an economic giant — as the world’s wealthiest single market, leading trader,
biggest development assistance and humanitarian aid donor (together with
its Member States), and a key normative power shaping international norms
and institutions - without a matching political influence in the global arena.
Or, as Kissinger has warned Europeans:
Will the emerging Europe become an active participant in the construction ofa new
international order, or will it consume itself in its own internal issues? ... Europe,
which had a near monopoly in the design of global order less than a century ago,
is in danger of cutting itself off from the contemporary quest for world order by
identifying its internal construction with its ultimate geopolitical purpose ... Europe
turns inwards just as the quest for a world order it significantly designed faces a
fraught juncture whose outcome could engulf any region that fails to help shape it.
Europe thus finds itself suspended between a past it seeks to overcome and a future
it has not yet defined. (Kissinger 2014, 95)
THE AIM OF THE BOOK
This book revolves around these and some other challenges and dilemmas in
contemporary European politics. It is about politics, but without the intention
of making politics. It is subjectively selective in the choice of the topics it
looks into. It is a book aimed at asking questions, without always giving
answers. It was written for use at universities by students and instructors,
but also in the hope of making a modest contribution to shaping awareness
in a broader public.
Its authors are well aware that Europe and the European Union are not
interchangeable equivalent concepts and terms. While their starting point
is European integration, they extend their analytical scope to European
politics - including both the European and the national, and sometimes the
subnational level - at large. On the other hand, when they refer to European