CLEER WP 2011/3 - Koutrakos (ed.)
Edited by Panos Koutrakos
Against the background of high expectations and even higher ambition for the Lisbon Treaty to enable the European Union to carry out a more effective and coherent foreign policy, it is appropriate to pause and examine the first year of the application of the Lisbon Treaty provisions. Has the revamped institutional framework enhanced the coherence and the effectiveness of the Union's external action? Has the visibility of the Union’s role been raised? What has been the impact of the abolition of the pillar structure for the conduct of the policies which were governed by different sets of rules under the pre-Lisbon constitutional configuration? And to what extent has the interaction between the Union’s institutions been facilitated by the new arrangements? Even if it is still too early to assess the impact of some of the changes, for instance the European External Action Service, the story of its genesis is instructive and the different dynamics which have underpinned its establishment worth-examining.
Based on papers given at a workshop organised by the University of Bristol in February 2011 under the aegis of the Jean Monnet Chair and with funding by the European Commission, this CLEER Working Paper does not purport to provide an exhaustive analysis of the changes introduced at Lisbon in the area of external relations. Instead, its aim is threefold. First, it sheds light on the practice of the Union institutions and the various actors in the first year of the application of the Lisbon Treaty, hence providing a first overview of the legal and policy challenges raised by the implementation of the Union’s new constitutional arrangements. Second, it gauges the implications of the Lisbon reforms in both legal and policy terms for the Union institutions, the Member States as well as third parties. Third, it brings together different communities: legal scholars, legal advisers of the Union’s institutions, legal advisers of Member States, and political scientists. Therefore, it approaches the Lisbon provisions on external relations from different perspectives, and addresses the different interests which have underpinned their application in the last year.
List of contributors:
Panos Koutrakos, Ricardo Gosalbo Bono, Esa Paasivirta, Ricardo Passos, Ivan Smyth, Simon Duke, Frank Hoffmeister, Geert De Baere and Steven Blockmans
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