ABSTRACT
This introduction first presents the volume’s contents and the questions addressed by each chapter. Second, it shows that the EU’s influence on global governance is based simultaneously on its long-term achievements as a model of regional cooperation, a multiple actor and policy-maker, as well as on its incipient and unprecedented kind of power. By assessing the EU’s current and future external impact, two kinds of variables are taken into account. On the one hand, external ones, linked to the evolving international post-cold war system, between unipolar, anarchical, multipolar and multilateral tendencies, where the EU action, interests and values look as underpinning a new multilateral order, albeit in a controversial and oscillating way. On the other hand, internal variables matter as well since the emerging EU coleadership is concerned – that is, the material, strategic and institutional capacities of a two-level polity, including the states and the European common dimension.
