Foreign Policies of EU Member States

Book excerpt: Foreign Policies of EU Member States provides a clear and current overview of the motivations and outcomes of EU Member States regarding their foreign policy-making within and beyond the EU. It provides an in-depth analysis of intra-EU policy-making and sheds light, in an innovative and understandable way, on the lesser-known aspects of the inter-EU and extra-EU foreign policies of the twenty-eight Member States. The text has an innovative method of thematic organisation in which case study state profiles emerge via dominant foreign policy themes. The text examines the three main policy challenges currently faced by the twenty-eight Member States: First, EU Member States must cooperate within the mechanisms of the EU, including the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Second, EU Member States continue to construct their own inter-EU foreign policies. Third, the sovereign prerogative exercised by all EU Member States is to construct their own foreign policies on everything from trade and defence with the rest of the world. This combination of clarity, thematic structure and empirical case studies make this an ideal textbook for all upper-level students of European foreign policy, comparative European politics and European studies.