ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a baseline understanding of how the actorness and external engagement of the European Union (EU) in certain long–standing internal policies have developed and how this development can be explained. It focuses on two prominent policies that apply across the Single European Market (SEM): competition and environmental policy. The chapter discusses the importance of the SEM for understanding the foundations of long-standing and more recent internal policies as well as the basis from which much of the EU's external engagement emerges. It answers two main research questions: first, to what extent the EU possesses actorness in the policy areas analyzed, and which are the main forms of the EU's external engagement in both policy areas; and second, what are the reasons driving this engagement. The chapter attempts to sketch a number of ways in which different explanantia can help to capture the myriad dynamics at play in the EU's extensive external engagement in these two long-standing policy areas.
