Koutrakos, Panos --- "Introduction" [2011] ELECD 219; in Koutrakos, Panos (ed), "European Foreign Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: European Foreign Policy

Editor(s): Koutrakos, Panos

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804097

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Koutrakos, Panos

Number of pages: 12

Extract:

Introduction
Panos Koutrakos

THE RATIONALE FOR THIS VOLUME: A MEETING AND
A CONVERSATION
To argue that the European Union has become an international actor is to state
the obvious. Since the establishment of the Communities in the 1950s, and in
the light of successive rounds of internal constitutional and institutional reform,
the Union has developed a sophisticated network of relations with its neigh-
bours, considerable links with third states and international organisations, a
framework for a political, security and defence policy to accompany its exter-
nal economic policies, an institutional infrastructure to support it, and has
engaged in a wide range of security and defence operations around the globe.
A number of internal and external factors have raised the profile of the
Union's international role: the consolidation of European integration, the
introduction of a common currency, and the recent rounds of enlargement,
along with the new international environment shaped by the terrorist attacks
first in New York and then in Madrid and London, the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, the increasing interdependence on the international scene, to name a few,
have all rendered the development of the Union's international relations fast
and that of its ambition even faster.
This ambition is reflected in the long and painful process of group therapy
which the Union has undergone in the last nine years. The Laeken Declaration
on the Future of the European Union, which initiated the process of reform of
the Union's Treaties in December 2001, referred prominently to ` ...