ABSTRACT
When the Lisbon Treaty entered into force in December 2009, many observers in academia and politics assumed that the new institutional set-up would fundamentally strengthen the European Union (EU), not least regarding the Union’s profile and standing on the global stage. Five years later, those who had hoped for a Lisbon upgrade for the EU’s global role were dismayed to read sobering assessments of ‘the world’s biggest losers’:
As Europe’s financial resources and political energy are sucked up by the euro black hole, the EU is losing its capacity to shape events in the neighbourhood. The chaos in Libya, the abject failures of western policy in Lebanon and Syria, the loss in Ukraine, Turkey’s continuing drift away from a European orientation, the steady disappearance of the climate agenda in global governance: all these testify to the continuing decline in Europe’s clout.
