EU External Action: Contested Supranational Leadership?

Abstract

From being widely supported to an increased politicisation in the last decades, EU foreign policy and external action seem now to have reached a new stage characterised by contestation and differentiated integration. Indeed, in many areas of EU’s external relations (including neighbourhood and enlargement policies), the activities and global position of the EU are being contested by diverse internal and international voices. The past few years witnessed a shift in EU’s global role that tends to be diminishing on the international arena, resulting in different trends of contestation. This panel aims at exploring how EU foreign policy is perceived and contested, as well as how contestation affects EU’s external action and relations. By bringing together a set of papers focusing on diverse policy areas and different actors, this panel reflects both on the internal and external contestation of EU’s external action. The panel indeed provides an interesting overview of contestation dynamics, from within the EU as well as from outside. The papers zoom into how the crises in the neighbourhood (migration crisis, Ukrainian conflict, COVID-19 crisis, etc.) are triggering contestation domestically and externally.

Title	Details
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