ABSTRACT
A striking development in the European Union’s foreign policy over the last decade or so is its growing role as a ‘proactive cosmopolitan’: the EU is attempting to create a consensus about liberal values and behaviour among diverse communities around the world. Until the end of the Cold War, the European Community took a much quieter approach to promoting political change, a function both of the tentative nature of foreignpolicy co-operation at the time, and of a desire by member states not to emulate superpower and/or colonial politics. Now it is actively trying to export certain norms by, for example, promoting human rights and democracy in other countries.
