This book investigates the new challenges confronted by the EU as an international actor within the context of recent economic and political developments, with particular attention to common foreign and security policies; the appraisal of development-aid policies; EU sanctions in the post-Soviet space, as harder instruments complementing the toolbox of the EU soft power polity; preferential trade agreements as a key element of EU external trade policy; external relations of the EU; international aspects of the monetary policy of the ECB in the context of the financial and sovereign debt...