‘European’ Foreign Policy: A Realistic Aspiration, or an Unattainable Goal?

Abstract

States have foreign policies. International organizations struggle to define and maintain common positions, with member governments suspicious either that their secretariats will gain too much autonomy in implementing common decisions, or that the most powerful member state or group of states will succeed in converting the organization into a vehicle for their hegemonic objectives. The European Union operates, often uneasily, between these two ideal types: not a state, lacking many of the attributes that statehood provides as a basis for national foreign policies, but with notably more authority to operate collectively in the world system than any international organization, including a wider degree of autonomy for its collective services, the European Commission, the Council Secretariat, and its various ‘High’ and ‘Special’ Representatives.