The EU’s Normative Foreign Policy

Many analysts of European foreign policy have studied the EU’s ambition to promote norms internationally. From this perspective, the EU has been defined as a “normative actor” (Bretherton and Vogler, 2006) and a “normative power” (Manners, 2002). This normative feature is an important aspect in European foreign policy, given the fact that the EU lacks many instruments of foreign policy typical of other states, both in terms of military resources and decision-making structures.