ABSTRACT
Over several decades of integration, the EU has taken multiple steps to increase its global political role. This book provides a detailed snapshot of the most recent phase of such attempts to grow, i.e. the making of diplomatic agency through the EEAS. Yet before this phase, the European integration process was accompanied by a long institutional evolution that eventually produced the EEAS. In this chapter, I trace this evolution. I review the positioning of the EU as a global and development actor in terms of policy frameworks and external relations instruments, such as the European Political Cooperation (EPC) in the early 1970s, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as the second pillar of the European Union between 1993 and 2009 and, eventually, the European External Action Service (EEAS). Unlike those previous measures to harmonise European foreign policy, the EEAS is a legal, separate and independent instrument with a joint mandate from the European Commission and the Member States (through the European Council) to represent the Union on all external relations. It thereby adds an institutional component to existing forms of cooperation of the member states in the fields of diplomacy and foreign policy.
