INTRODUCTION

This chapter considers the external relations of the European Union. It is organised as follows.

Section 2 examines the nature of the European Union's international legal presence. The Union is granted legal personality and so enjoys a status in international law, just as states do. To that end, the Union can adopt two types of measure: unilateral measures, which are targeted at other states or people and organisations resident in other states, and international agreements with other states. The European Council is the central agenda-setter in all this, setting the aims, duration and means for any external action. The mission of EU external action set out in Article 21 TEU is, however, to be centred less around crisis-management and more around a structural foreign policy, setting out long-term agendas, which are based on exporting EU values such as democracy, the rule of law and economic liberalism to its partner states in hopes that closer alignment of the former by the latter will promote peace, global security and political stability.

Section 3 looks at the competences of the Union. A hotchpotch of competences scattered across various EU instruments makes it difficult for the Union to achieve coherence in its external action. The TFEU includes competences which are overtly external, such as external trade or development, but also competences such as protection of the environment or sport and education whose centre of gravity is domestic but which allow for international agreements to be made in the field.