ABSTRACT
This book asks how a small and new European Union member state pursues its interests in EU foreign policy-making. It aims at contributing to two strands of academic debate. First, it adds to the extensive literature on decision-making in the EU by mapping the informal methods that a member state uses to shape the resulting compromise in the Council and beyond. It builds on rational choice institutionalism, which presumes that member states’ policies are influenced by international institutions in general and, in particular, that they use these institutions to strengthen their position vis-àvis other actors in the negotiations. In other words, the member states come to the negotiation table with predefined interests and priorities. The ways and strategies used to persuade the partners at the table and promote their particular preferences in the final policy are, however, tailored to the institutional setting. This may include specific behaviour, negotiation tactics, or imagebuilding, but may also result in giving up on some interests in order to gain elsewhere.
