Foreign policy-making in the European Union : how the political system affects the EU's relations with the United States

Abstract

This chapter assesses the role played by the EU’s institutional set-up in its foreign-policy-making and in transatlantic relations as a part of it. I argue that the role of the common EU institutions in economic and trade relations is decisive in the formulation of the Union’s policy. The key driving forces affecting the positions of EU institutions differ from those influencing member state positions. I offer a general presentation of the EU’s decision-making system in external relations in the next section, after which I turn to the EU’s external economic and trade policy and the role played by institutional and personal factors. In this part, as well as in the subsequent analysis of the common foreign and security policy, I use some case studies to illustrate how the substance of decisions taken reflects the configuration of institutional and personal factors behind them.