ABSTRACT
Over the recent years, the Indo-Pacific has graduated from a geostrategic term reserved for a relatively niche community of analysts to an almost ubiquitous, albeit still fuzzy, concept that in a generous interpretation captures as many as five continents. The fact that policymakers around the world, including those in Europe, have been paying greater attention to the region is no doubt a reflection of the impact security and economic developments in this region have on the rest of the world, and which are by and large a direct consequence, or a by-product, of China's growing power and assertiveness. There is no shortage of contributions to the debate on the EU's global “actorness.” For nearly half a century, EU studies’ scholars have been assessing the purpose and nature of the EU as a global actor, while at the same time trying to come to a consensus as to what sort of political actor it is in the first place.
