ABSTRACT
The Brexit vote of June 2016 has prompted global audiences to look at the EU afresh. These perceptions of the EU post-Brexit referendum have been investigated in the contributions to this volume. This concluding chapter reviews the country cases presented in this volume and summarizes their results with regard to the three guiding research questions. The chapters reveal a limited change to the global perceptions of the EU following the Brexit referendum. Beyond the economic realm, Brexit has had little independent effect on the images of the EU as a global actor. However, Brexit is seen to add to the pre-existing crises of the EU that keep undermining the EU’s global appeal. With regard to the changing policy priorities of third countries, we discern some common trends as well as some differences between the various country perceptions. This underlines that the interplay of the three types of factors – exogenous (EU-specific), endogenous (third country domestic) and global – has a significant role in shaping perceptions of countries’ policy options vis-à-vis the EU in the post-referendum period. We conclude by working out policy recommendations for EU foreign policy-makers for the time after the UK’s exit from the EU.
