Many Actors, one Path?

European foreign policy-making is a strange process. It entails a structured process of coordination between a wide range of types of state – from micro to major, from new to old, from established member to recent entrant. What is more, while the apparently central focus of foreign policy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy, is still determinedly intergovernmental, many of the EU’s most important external actions, such as enlargement and overseas development, involve the Commission and the ‘Community method’. The newly ratified Lisbon Treaty pulls all this together under one head, and allows for the possibility that the High Representative and/or the Union President will be able to orchestrate a single set of policies to which all actors have bought in.