Written by leading experts in the field, this volume identifies European collective preferences and analyzes to what extent these preferences inform and shape EU foreign policy and are shared by other actors in the international system.

While studies of the EU's foreign policy are not new, this book takes a very different tack from previous research. Specifically it leaves aside the institutional and bureaucratic dimensions of the European Union's behaviour as an international actor in order to concentrate on the meanings and outcomes of its foreign policy taken in the broadest...