1.1 Motives and Nature of EU External Action

From its very beginnings, the integration project that is the European Union had an internal as well as an external dimension: internally, the aim was to further (primarily economic) cooperation between the Member States, leading to common policies and most importantly the creation of a customs unions and an internal market. At the same time, the Member States saw that regional cooperation had the potential of strengthening their position on the global stage. By acting collectively, the Member States of the European Union have more economic weight and can thus exert more global influence. This provided an incentive for vesting the Union with the competence to conduct external relations in certain areas. At the same time, as the Union becomes an ever stronger global economic force, this raises the expectation that it also takes on a role and responsibility beyond the Member States’ borders. The Union has been grappling with this responsibility and in 2001 posed the question:

“What is Europe's role in this changed world? Does Europe not, now that [it] is finally unified, have a leading role to play in a new world order, that of a power able both to play a stabilising role worldwide and to point the way ahead for many countries and peoples?”^[1]

Thus, motive behind the external action of the EU is not only the pursuit of Union interests but also the assumption of responsibility for stability and global development.
 
Just like sovereign States, the Union has a number of powerful instruments at its disposal to conduct its international relations. It possesses international legal personality, can conclude treaties, is a member of a number of international organisations, has the capacity to enact legislation with external implications and possesses significant financial resources to spend on external action. At the same time, the EU system of external action is by far more complex than the foreign policy of a single State. The external policies of the Union interact not only with its internal policies, but also with the foreign policies of the individual Member States, since the latter retain significant competences with regard to external relations. What adds to the complexity is that there is no clear-cut separation between national and EU level, as national actors may be part of EU institutions and national policies may materially overlap with those of the EU. A further dimension is added when considering other international fora that produce external policies such as the UN or the WTO. Not only because Member States of the Union and/or the Union itself may be involved in these organisations, EU foreign policy necessarily interacts with policies originating from them. External action of the European Union thus operates within a multilevel system of foreign policy involving numerous levels of governance.^[2] This leads to a significant complexity of EU external relations and poses challenges for its overall coherence.