Since the 1990s, there has been a steady expansion of the practical and scholarly interest in the international role of the European Community (EC) / EuropeanUnion (EU) both as a partner/rival to other actors in world affairs and as an actor in its own right. The objective of this course is to give a broad introduction to the ideas and issues related to the EU’s international role and identity in a globalizing world. The course commences with a conceptual and theoretical analysis of the international presence and actorness of the EU. Next, its overviews the legal bases and the institutional framework of EC/EU’s external relations and outlines various attempts to further develop the EU’s foreign and security policy, beginning with European Political Cooperation (EPC), culminating in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the recent move into Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Against this theoretical and historical background, the rest of the course concentrates key areas of policy substance and has the general aim of exploring the ways in which EU policies are pursued and have effects within the international arena.

This course is therefore designed to give students an understanding of:

• the foreign policy of the EU or, more precisely the EU’s ‘foreign policy system’, which includes the external economic relations of the EC, the CFSP, the CSDP, as well as the evolving international role and identity of the Union;

• the main aspects of relations between, on the one hand, the EU and, on the other, its key partners and main interest areas, including in particular the Neighbourhood, the Developing World and the BRICS;

• the main analytical concepts used in the literature to understand and explain developments in the foreign policy of the EU.