External Relations of the European Union Course

Course Philosophy

Three core principles guide this curriculum:

• Institutional Mediation: EU foreign policy outcomes emerge from the friction and compromise of an institutional architecture that mediates between supranational ambition and member state sovereignty.

• Theoretical Pluralism: No single framework, whether liberal intergovernmentalist, supranationalist, constructivist, normative power theory, or realist, fully captures EU external behaviour; each illuminates specific dynamics while leaving others unexplained.

• Normative Reflexivity: The EU's self-description as a normative power is itself a contested claim that analysis must test against evidence.

EU external relations refers to the full range of institutions, instruments, and relationships through which the European Union projects influence beyond its borders: the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Common Security and Defence Policy, trade and sanctions policy, enlargement and neighbourhood conditionality, development cooperation, and bilateral and multilateral diplomacy.

This course examines EU external relations as a contested question of actorness and capacity, situating the EU's instruments within the broader tension between its declared ambitions and its structural capacity to act.

MODULE I: Foundations of EU External Action

Week 1: What kind of actor is the European Union in world politics?

Week 2: Who makes EU foreign policy? The institutional architecture and its politics

MODULE II: Security, Strategy, and Identity

Week 3: The CFSP and CSDP: instruments, achievements, and structural limits

Week 4: Is the European Union a normative power or a strategic actor?

MODULE III: Instruments of External Influence

Week 5: Power through rules: trade, conditionality, and economic leverage

Week 6: Development, humanitarian action, and the EU in international institutions

Week 7: Enlargement and the neighbourhood: transformation, leverage, and fatigue

MODULE IV: The EU in a Competitive World Order

Week 8: EU-China and EU-US: navigating great power competition

Week 9: EU relations with Asia, Africa, and Latin America

MODULE V: Coherence, Strategic Limits, and the EU's Global Future

Week 10: Coherence, credibility, and crisis: the structural challenges of EU external action

Week 11: The EU as a global actor: power, norms, and strategic limits

Week 12: What will EU external relations look like in 2050?

Analytical Proposition

EU external relations operate as a permanently negotiated compromise between supranational ambition and member state sovereignty, producing a foreign policy actor whose capabilities are powerful in some domains and structurally hollow in others.

Three structural dynamics define its operation:

• Institutional Fragmentation of Authority: A single High Representative and a single External Action Service mask persistent competition between supranational and intergovernmental decision-making across different policy domains.

• Instrument Asymmetry: The EU's economic and regulatory instruments, including trade, conditionality, and the Brussels Effect, are far more developed than its political and military instruments, producing an actor whose strength varies sharply by domain.

• Values Without Enforcement: The EU routinely adopts normative commitments that it enforces selectively, or not at all, when they conflict with strategic or commercial interest.

Every week of this 12-week course is structured around four distinct learning pillars to ensure you build theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and critical awareness:

• Lecture: Core concepts, theoretical frameworks, and key debates.

• Workshop: Application of concepts to real-world empirical cases.

• Analytical Lab: Hands-on methodological training and data analysis.

• Reflexive Question: A direct challenge designed to unpack hidden systemic assumptions.

Deep Thinking

• What is the EU foreign policy action, instrument, or relationship under analysis, and what are the observable facts about the institutional process, the material commitments made, and the diplomatic, legal, or regulatory outcomes that resulted? (Empirical baseline)

• Which EU institutions, member states, and external partners shaped the outcome, and where did authority actually sit, given the permanent structural tension between supranational ambition and member state sovereignty? (Agential mapping)

• Which theoretical framework (liberal intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, normative power theory, regulatory power analysis, or a realist account of strategic capacity) best explains the EU's behaviour in this case, and what does it assume about the relationship between values and strategic interests? (Theoretical application)

• What does this framework fail to explain: where did institutional coherence break down, which external actors or normative claims were foreclosed, and how does the gap between EU rhetoric and material commitment expose the limits of the chosen explanation? (Analytical limitation)

• How does this EU action look from the perspective of a partner state, a neighbourhood actor, or a regional power in the Global South, and what does that perspective reveal about whose interests the EU's self-description as a normative actor actually serves? (Reflexive critique)

Learning Outcomes

• Evaluate the theoretical frameworks for understanding EU external action: Explain and critically assess the major frameworks (liberal intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, normative power theory, regulatory power analysis, and realist accounts of strategic capacity) and adjudicate between them using specific empirical cases, maintaining throughout the course's core question of whether EU behaviour expresses values or pursues strategic interests in normative language.

• Analyse institutional architecture and assess policy instruments: Evaluate the roles, competences, and limitations of the High Representative, the EEAS, the Commission, the Council, and member state governments, and assess the principal instruments of EU external action, the CFSP and CSDP, trade and sanctions policy, enlargement conditionality, neighbourhood policy, and development cooperation, including where instrument asymmetry and institutional fragmentation undermine coherence.

• Evaluate bilateral relationships and interpret primary sources critically: Examine the EU's engagement with major powers and regional groupings (the United States, China, Russia, and the regional partners of Asia, Africa, and Latin America) and interpret policy documents, legal texts, and strategic frameworks with the precision needed to distinguish normative rhetoric from material commitment.

• Develop strategic assessments and scenario-based foresight: Produce professional strategic analyses and policy recommendations under conditions of geopolitical pressure and institutional constraint, including scenario-based assessments of the EU's external role over a 10–20 year horizon that engage seriously with the structural limits of EU actorness.

Assessment

Assessment 1: EU External Action Analysis (35% | 2,500 words)
Students select one EU foreign policy decision, instrument, or bilateral relationship and produce a sustained analytical assessment of its institutional logic, strategic coherence, and normative foundations. The analysis must identify the EU institutions and member states involved in shaping the outcome and assess where authority actually sat during the decision-making process, given the structural tension between supranational ambition and member state sovereignty. Students must apply at least two theoretical frameworks from the course, such as liberal intergovernmentalism, normative power theory, regulatory power analysis, or a realist account of strategic capacity, to account for the EU's behaviour, and must assess the gap between the EU's stated normative commitments and its observable material or diplomatic actions. The analysis must conclude with a reflexive assessment of how the EU's action appears from the perspective of an external partner or non-European regional actor. Submission Deadline: End of Week 7.

Assessment 2: Capstone EU External Relations Futures Report (55% | 5,000–6,000 words)
The primary summative assessment for this course is a scenario-based strategic report assessing a major contemporary challenge in EU external relations. The report must map the key actors and structural constraints shaping the challenge; evaluate the EU instruments available and assess their likely coherence and effectiveness under conditions of geopolitical pressure and institutional constraint; and develop three distinct and mutually exclusive long-term scenarios for the evolution of the EU's external role in the relevant domain over the next 10–20 years. The report must deploy multiple theoretical frameworks to explain both the current situation and the diverging trajectories of each scenario, and must assess the implications of each scenario for EU strategic capacity, institutional coherence, and external credibility. The analysis must maintain throughout the course's central distinction between the EU's normative self-description and its structural capacity to act. Submission Deadline: Sunday of Week 14 (Formal Assessment Period, following the conclusion of Week 12 teaching).

Assessment 3: Seminar Participation and Analytical Engagement (10% | Ongoing)
Participation is assessed continuously throughout the semester. Marks reflect the quality and consistency of engagement across three interconnected dimensions: contribution to seminar and workshop discussions, demonstrating the ability to apply theoretical concepts to empirical cases and to challenge competing interpretations with reasoned argument; performance in the weekly Analytical Labs, showing growing proficiency in applying course methodologies to live data and case material; and conduct in simulation and debate exercises, including the willingness to defend positions under adversarial questioning, respond to new evidence, and revise conclusions accordingly. Attendance is a prerequisite for participation credit, but marks are awarded for the quality and intellectual rigour of engagement rather than for the volume of contribution.

Submission, Formatting Requirements and Academic Integrity

• All written work must be submitted as a PDF file, regardless of the word processor used.

• Use font at 12 points Aptos or Arial. Pages must be numbered. Include your name, student number, course name, assignment title, and word count on the first page; a separate cover page is not required.

• The word count stated in the assignment brief is a guide to scope and depth, not a rigid threshold. Work within 10% of the stated count in either direction. The word count covers the main body of the text, including in-text citations, but excludes the reference list, any tables or figures, and any appendices.

• All written work must follow APA 7th edition throughout. In-text citations use the author-date format: (Yergin, 2020) or Yergin (2020) argues that… For direct quotations, include the page number: (Yergin, 2020, p. 47). The reference list appears at the end of the document, ordered alphabetically by surname. Do not use footnotes for references; footnotes may be used sparingly for substantive clarifications that would otherwise interrupt the argument.

• Formal policies on academic integrity and the use of AI tools vary by institution and will be communicated where applicable. The question beneath those policies does not change: Is the goal to understand, or simply to appear to have understood? A qualification obtained without the knowledge it is meant to represent is a transaction, not an education, and it shortchanges the holder as much as anyone else. I invest genuine effort in connecting students to scholarship, practitioners, and professional networks that extend well beyond any syllabus. Whether that investment meets a reciprocal commitment is, in the end, a question of character rather than compliance.

Literature

• Bremberg, N., Danielson, A., Hedling, E., & Michalski, A. (2022). The everyday making of EU foreign and security policy: Practices, socialization and the management of dissent. Edward Elgar Publishing.

• Kaddous, C., & Hoffmeister, F. (Eds.). (2025). EU diplomacy in multilateral fora. Hart Publishing.

• Keukeleire, S., & Delreux, T. (2022). The foreign policy of the European Union (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

• Wessel, R. A., & Larik, J. (Eds.). (2026). EU external relations law: Text, cases and materials (3rd ed.). Hart Publishing.

Research articles do not appear in the bibliography above. This is intentional. Each week, students are expected to identify a peer-reviewed article relevant to that week’s topic, bring it to the seminar, and share it with the group. The lecturer contributes selections alongside the class. This practice develops independent literature-searching habits, exposes the seminar to a wider range of scholarly perspectives than any fixed reading list could provide, and keeps the course in sustained contact with current debates in the field.

Course Structure and Content

MODULE I: Foundations of EU External Action

Week 1: What kind of actor is the European Union in world politics?

Core Question: What kind of actor is the European Union in world politics?

Topics: The EU as an international actor; treaty foundations of EU external action; liberal intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, constructivism, and normative power theory; the boundary between EU competence and member state authority.

Theoretical Lens: A comparative orientation across the course's four foundational frameworks, liberal intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, constructivism, and normative power theory, each introduced as a competing baseline account for students to test against the evidence.

Analytical Lab: Individually, each student is assigned one theoretical framework and applies it to a specific EU foreign policy episode of their choosing, producing a 300-word analysis. Each student delivers a 3-minute pitch arguing for their framework's verdict, and the seminar collectively assesses which framework best accounts for the episode and where each approach reaches its limits.

Reflexive Question: Is treating the EU as a single "actor" in world politics already an analytical distortion of how its foreign policy actually gets made?

Additional Literature 

• • Freire, M. R., Lopes, P. D., Nascimento, D., & Simão, L. (Eds.). (2022). EU global actorness in a world of contested leadership: Policies, instruments and perceptions. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Lika, L., & Riga, D. (Eds.). (2025). EU geopolitical actorness in a changing world. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Neuman, M., Wessel, R. A., & de Zee, T. (Eds.). (2025). A geopolitical Europe in the making? The EU’s actorness in a (de-)globalising world. Springer.

  • Rieker, P., & Giske, M. T. E. (2023). European actorness in a shifting geopolitical order. Palgrave Macmillan.

Week 2: Who makes EU foreign policy? The institutional architecture and its politics

Core Question: Who makes EU foreign policy, and where does authority actually sit?

Topics: The High Representative and Vice President role; the European External Action Service; the Commission's external competences; Council unanimity and the politics of the lowest common denominator; the European Parliament's role.

Theoretical Lens: Institutionalist and bureaucratic politics analysis of EU foreign policy machinery, drawing on principal-agent and multi-level governance approaches to explain where delegated authority creates autonomy and where it creates friction.

Analytical Lab: Pairs select one specified EU foreign policy decision and produce an institutional pathway diagram tracing how the policy moved between the High Representative, the EEAS, the Commission, the Council, and member states, plus a 300-word assessment of where the process generated coherence and where it produced fragmentation. Presented as a 5-minute seminar walkthrough.

Reflexive Question: Does an institutional architecture built to produce consensus inevitably produce ambiguity about who is accountable when EU foreign policy fails?

Additional Literature 

• • Dinan, D., & Drachenberg, R. (2026). Understanding the European Council. Bloomsbury Academic.

  • McCormick, J. (2026). European Union politics. Bloomsbury.

  • Wallace, H., Pollack, M. A., & Young, A. (2025). Policy-making in the European Union. Oxford University Press.

MODULE II: Security, Strategy, and Identity 

Week 3: The CFSP and CSDP: instruments, achievements, and structural limits

Core Question: Are the CFSP and CSDP underdeveloped instruments or deliberately constrained ones?

Topics: CFSP legal basis and the unanimity constraint; CSDP missions and capabilities; qualified majority voting debates; EU sanctions design and adoption; PESCO and the European Defence Fund.

Theoretical Lens: Liberal intergovernmentalist analysis of security and defence policy, treating the unanimity rule as a deliberate institutional choice by states unwilling to surrender control over the use of force.

Analytical Lab: Groups of 6 to 8 each represent a different member state in a Council working group simulation, negotiating toward, or failing to reach, a common position on a specified foreign policy crisis under the unanimity rule. Each student submits a 200-word national position brief beforehand; the seminar session runs as a live negotiation.

Reflexive Question: Is the unanimity requirement a safeguard of national sovereignty, or the single greatest obstacle to a credible European security policy?

Additional Literature 

• • Bremberg, N., Danielson, A., Hedling, E., & Michalski, A. (2022). The everyday making of EU foreign and security policy: Practices, socialization and the management of dissent. Edward Elgar Publishing.

  • Calcara, A. (2021). European defence decision-making. Routledge.

  • Kaunert, C., Bosse, G., & Vieira, A. (Eds.). (2026). EU, security and the Eastern Partnership. Routledge.

  • Mawdsley, J., Chappell, L., & Galbreath, D. J. (Eds.). (2019). Contemporary European security. Routledge.

Week 4: Is the European Union a normative power or a strategic actor?

Core Question: Is the European Union a normative power or a strategic actor?

Topics: Normative power Europe: origins and critique; strategic autonomy: doctrine and debate; values versus strategic interest; the 2016 Global Strategy; the evolution of EU strategic thinking since 2022.

Theoretical Lens: Normative Power Europe (Manners) in direct theoretical contest with realist and strategic-actor accounts of EU capacity.

Analytical Lab: The seminar splits into two teams: one defends the normative power Europe framework, the other argues for a realist or strategic-actor account, each grounding their position in specific empirical cases such as the Ukraine arms supply decision or the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Each team prepares a 400-word position brief beforehand; the session runs as a structured debate followed by a collective vote on which framework better explains the evidence.

Reflexive Question: Was normative power Europe ever an honest description of EU behaviour, or always a flattering story the EU told about itself?

Why It Matters: How the normative power debate is resolved determines the theoretical lens through which every subsequent week's material gets interpreted, whether EU behaviour expresses values or pursues interests dressed in normative language.

Additional Literature 

• • Chen, X. (2024). Understanding the EU’s norm and policy diffusion in ASEAN through trade and security cooperation. Routledge.

  • Peng, Z. (2025). The normative power of the EU and China. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Vatsov, M. (2023). Fishing power Europe. Springer.

  • Whitman, R. G. (Ed.). (2011). Normative power Europe: Empirical and theoretical perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan.

MODULE III: Instruments of External Influence 

Week 5: Power through rules: trade, conditionality, and economic leverage

Core Question: How far does economic leverage actually convert into political influence?

Topics: EU trade policy competence and instruments; conditionality design and implementation gaps; the Brussels Effect and regulatory power; sanctions as economic coercion; the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

Theoretical Lens: Regulatory power and the Brussels Effect (Bradford) as a market-power account of EU external influence, distinct from both normative and military explanations.

Analytical Lab: Individually, students select one bilateral trade or development relationship and produce a 350-word conditionality evaluation covering the compliance record, the available enforcement mechanisms, and the competing interests shaping EU willingness to act. Submitted ahead of seminar to structure discussion, and directly usable as groundwork for the Part I Actor and Case Positioning Analysis due the same week.

Reflexive Question: Can a foreign policy actor whose primary tool is market access ever be considered a normative actor, or only ever a commercial one?

Additional Literature 

• • Bradford, A. (2020). The Brussels effect: How the European Union rules the world. Oxford University Press.

  • Hadjiyianni, I. (2021). The EU as a global regulator for environmental protection. Hart Publishing.

  • Reinfeld, Y., & Gaon, A. (2025). The European Union and digital law. Routledge.

  • Zhang, X. (2023). Linkage power Europe. Taylor & Francis.

Week 6: Development, humanitarian action, and the EU in international institutions

Core Question: Is development cooperation a strategic instrument or a values-driven exception to strategic logic?

Topics: EU development cooperation and the Global Europe framework; humanitarian aid and the ECHO mandate; the EU in the UN, the WTO, the G7, and the G20; Global Gateway and competition with Chinese infrastructure investment.

Theoretical Lens: A liberal institutionalist account of multilateral engagement, set against critiques that frame aid as an instrument of strategic competition with rival powers.

Analytical Lab: Pairs select one EU development or humanitarian engagement, for example Global Gateway in Africa, and produce a comparative brief setting EU strategic objectives against at least one alternative provider such as China, the United States, or a Gulf state, plus a 300-word coherence assessment. Presented as a 5-minute seminar briefing.

Reflexive Question: If development assistance functions as strategic competition with China and the United States, how values-driven can the EU credibly claim its aid actually is?

Additional Literature 

• • Jordana, J., Marx, A., Vandendriessche, M., & Wouters, J. (Eds.). (2025). Institutions of global governance. Edward Elgar Publishing.

  • Kaddous, C., & Hoffmeister, F. (Eds.). (2025). EU diplomacy in multilateral fora. Hart Publishing.

  • Morlino, I. (2026). Humanitarian aid and the European Union. Routledge.

  • Taylor, M. R. (2023). The practical role of the EU’s values in diplomacy with China. Routledge.

  • Turner, L. (2024). Lessons in diplomacy. Policy Press.

Week 7: Enlargement and the neighbourhood: transformation, leverage, and fatigue

Core Question: What determines whether enlargement and neighbourhood policy actually transform partner states?

Topics: The accession process and conditionality; democratic backsliding and post-accession enforcement; the Western Balkans impasse; Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia as candidate states; the European Neighbourhood Policy.

Theoretical Lens: External governance and conditionality theory, particularly the external incentives model (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier), as the dominant explanatory framework for enlargement-driven transformation.

Analytical Lab: Groups of 3 to 4 each take one candidate or neighbourhood country and produce a strategic assessment memo of 400 words evaluating the current state of engagement, the principal obstacles to progress, and a recommended sequenced EU approach.

Reflexive Question: Has the EU's enlargement instrument become a victim of its own historical success, no longer credible precisely because it once worked so well?

Why It Matters: Enlargement is the EU's most historically successful transformative instrument, and understanding why it has stalled is essential to judging whether the EU retains the capacity for ambitious foreign policy action at all.

Additional Literature 

• • Blouet, B. W. (2018). The EU and neighbors. Wiley.

  • Isokaitė-Valužė, I., & Šinkūnas, H. (Eds.). (2025). The European Union 2004–2024. Springer.

  • Schimmelfennig, F., & Sedelmeier, U. (Eds.). (2005). The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe. Cornell University Press.

  • Vidačak, I. (2026). The Western Balkans and the challenges of EU accession. Routledge.

MODULE IV: The EU in a Competitive World Order

Week 8: EU-China and EU-US: navigating great power competition

Core Question: Can the EU manage two structurally divergent great power relationships at once without one undermining the other?

Topics: The EU-US relationship and strategic dependency; the EU-China partner-competitor-systemic rival framework; technology and digital standards competition; de-risking and decoupling; strategic autonomy and the transatlantic relationship.

Theoretical Lens: Realist and strategic-autonomy framings of EU positioning amid great power competition, in tension with liberal interdependence accounts of transatlantic and EU-China economic ties.

Analytical Lab: Pairs select one point of tension in either the EU-US or EU-China relationship and produce a strategy memo of 400 words articulating the strategic interests at stake, the available instruments, and the risks of alternative courses of action. Due the same week as the Part II Policy Evaluation Brief, giving students a second worked example of policy-relevant strategic analysis before submission.

Reflexive Question: Can the EU manage China simultaneously as partner, competitor, and systemic rival without the framework itself becoming an excuse for strategic incoherence?

Additional Literature 

• • Futter, A. (2020). Threats to Euro-Atlantic security. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Gurol, J. (2022). The EU–China security paradox: Cooperation against all odds? Bristol University Press.

  • Hyde-Price, A. (2007). European security in the twenty-first century: The challenge of multipolarity. Routledge.

  • Marsh, D. (2025). Can Europe survive? Yale University Press.

  • Theuns, T. (2025). Protecting democracy in Europe. Oxford University Press.

  • van der Linden, R. W. H., & Łasak, P. (2024). Sino-EU economic relations. Palgrave Macmillan.

Week 9: EU relations with Asia, Africa, and Latin America

Core Question: What determines the depth and effectiveness of EU engagement beyond the great power triangle?

Topics: EU-ASEAN strategic partnership and the Indo-Pacific dimension; EU-Japan economic convergence; EU-Africa and the Global Gateway; EU-Latin America and the Mercosur negotiations; consistency and credibility across regions.

Theoretical Lens: Comparative foreign policy analysis applied to regional engagement, examining variation in EU strategic investment and institutional development across regions of differing strategic priority.

Analytical Lab: Groups of 3 each take one region, ASEAN, Africa, or Latin America, and produce a comparative engagement profile assessing the instruments deployed, the principal obstacles to deeper engagement, and competition from other external actors, plus a 300-word synthesis. Presented as a 5-minute seminar briefing.

Reflexive Question: Does the EU's comparatively thin engagement with Asia, Africa, and Latin America reveal its true strategic priorities more honestly than its rhetoric of global partnership does?

Additional Literature 

• • Fargion, V., & Gazibo, M. (Eds.). (2021). Revisiting EU–Africa relations in a changing world. Edward Elgar Publishing.

  • Haastrup, T., Mah, L., & Duggan, N. (Eds.). (2020). The Routledge handbook of EU–Africa relations. Routledge.

  • Kosevich, E. (2024). Extra-regional powers in Latin America in the 21st century. Brill.

  • Oloruntoba, S. O., Nshimbi, C. C., & Tshimpaka, L. M. (Eds.). (2023). Africa–EU relations and the African Continental Free Trade Area. Routledge.

  • Sahakyan, M. (2023). China and Eurasian powers in a multipolar world order 2.0. Routledge.

  • Satinsky, D. (2023). Creating the post-Soviet Russian market economy. Routledge.

  • Telò, M. (Ed.). (2014). European Union and new regionalism: Competing regionalism and global governance in a post-hegemonic era (3rd ed.). Ashgate.

MODULE V: Coherence, Strategic Limits, and the EU's Global Future

Week 10: Coherence, credibility, and crisis: the structural challenges of EU external action

Core Question: Is incoherence in EU foreign policy a remediable failure or a structural feature?

Topics: Horizontal and vertical coherence; values versus interests in EU external action; crisis as a driver of EU foreign policy; the credibility of selective conditionality enforcement.

Theoretical Lens: The coherence literature in EU foreign policy analysis, distinguishing horizontal coherence across instruments from vertical coherence between EU and member state action.

Analytical Lab: This is Part One of the graded Applied Exercise and Reflection assessment (15% overall). Each student is assigned a member state, EU institution, or external partner role and submits a 500-word position paper before the session, then participates in a structured multilateral negotiation over a specified EU foreign policy crisis.

Reflexive Question: Is incoherence in EU foreign policy a problem to be fixed, or the permanent price of being a union of twenty-seven sovereign states?

Additional Literature 

• • Greiçevci, L. (2021). The EU as a state-builder in international affairs. Routledge.

  • Kriesi, H. (2025). Crisis policymaking in the EU. Cambridge University Press.

  • Marcuzzi, S. (2022). The EU, NATO and the Libya conflict. Taylor & Francis.

  • Morlino, I. (2026). Humanitarian aid and the European Union. Routledge.

  • Nissen, C. (2026). Europeanization and the making of the EU as a security actor. Routledge.

  • Thomann, E., Weaver, R. K., & Zgaga, T. (2026). Policy dynamics in the European Union. Cambridge University Press.

Week 11: The EU as a global actor: power, norms, and strategic limits

Core Question: What kind of global actor can the EU realistically become?

Topics: The EU's assets and structural weaknesses as a global actor; hard, soft, and regulatory power; the EU in a multipolar world; reform debates for a more effective global actor.

Theoretical Lens: Actorness theory (Bretherton and Vogler), synthesising capacity, presence, and opportunity as the framework for assessing what kind of global actor the EU actually is.

Analytical Lab: Part Two of the same graded simulation. Negotiations conclude, successfully or not, followed by individual five-minute reflective presentations; the formal 750-word reflective commentary is submitted afterward as the assessment's final component.

Reflexive Question: If the EU's most effective instruments are economic and regulatory, while its military and diplomatic instruments remain underdeveloped, should it simply stop describing itself as an aspiring geopolitical power?

Additional Literature 

• • Graziano, P. R., & Tosun, J. (Eds.). (2022). Elgar encyclopedia of European Union public policy. Edward Elgar Publishing.

  • Magone, J. M. (2019). Contemporary European politics: A comparative introduction (2nd ed.). Routledge.

  • Sweeney, S. (2024). European Union in the global context. Taylor & Francis.

  • von Lucke, F., Diez, T., Aamodt, S., & Ahrens, B. (2021). The EU and global climate justice. Routledge.

Week 12: What will EU external relations look like in 2050?

Core Question: What forces will most determine the EU's strategic weight by 2050?

Topics: European defence integration scenarios; enlargement and the EU's borders in 2050; artificial intelligence and cyber competition; multipolarity and the post-Western order; scenario construction methodology.

Theoretical Lens: Scenario-based strategic forecasting methodology, applied to competing trajectories of European integration versus fragmentation.

Analytical Lab: Extended two-hour workshop. Groups of 4 to 5 construct two contrasting scenarios for EU external relations in 2050, producing a one-page scenario matrix per scenario plus a 400-word narrative justification, then subject each other's scenarios to critical scrutiny in open seminar discussion.

Reflexive Question: Which is more likely to determine the EU's strategic weight in 2050: choices made in Brussels, or choices made in Washington and Beijing?

Additional Literature 

• • Alcaro, R., & Bargués, P. (2025). Conflict management and the future of EU foreign and security policy. Taylor & Francis.

  • Avbelj, M. (2023). The future of EU constitutionalism. Hart Publishing.

  • Labareda, J. (2026). Visions for Europe. Manchester University Press.

  • Piris, J.-C. (2011). The future of Europe. Cambridge University Press.

  • Zielonka, J. (2014). Is the EU doomed? Polity.

*** This course is designed to be adaptable. The weekly structure, assessment components, and reading load can be adjusted to suit the requirements of a particular higher education institution or the context of individual tutoring, and can be scaled to meet the demands of bachelor’s and master’s degree students alike. The analytical framework and intellectual ambitions of the course remain constant; the format is a starting point, not a constraint.

Updated – June 2026

I have done my utmost to ensure everything is correct, but if you spot any mistakes, please let me know, as I am only human after all. Additionally, if you have a recommendation for another excellent book that could enhance this course, please do share your suggestions.

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