The liberal international order, i.e. the collection of norms, institutions and power relationships that have defined the last decades of international political and economic relations, is undergoing major transformations.
The situation is shaped by a return of competition between great powers (US, China, EU and Russia), facilitated further by growing geopolitical ambitions of many regional powers. These developments call for a systematic overhaul of research on the international role of the EU.
Over the past decades, the EU’s role in international politics was understood based on two assumptions. First, the EU was seen as an integration-through-law project, and a community of values. The promotion of certain international norms was seen as the externalisation of internal consensuses. Second, even when the EU entertained projects of reform for the international order, they sought to strengthen its institutions and norms, in a moment when such strengthening was perceived as being broadly in line with the trajectory of international politics. This state of affairs has ceased to exist.
EUFOG will train a generation of scholars to enable them to address the politics, policies and partners associated with the ways in which EU foreign policy responds to these new international realities in a broad range of issue areas, from security to trade to human rights.
