The External Relations of The European Community

Abstract

The European Community (EC) has been in existence for over twenty years and its permanence is no longer seriously questioned. This recognition of the EC as a permanent component of the global system is partially acknowledged by the shift of scholarly research from the internal problems of Community development to its external relations. Here a number of important questions are unre solved : Is the EC a coherent global actor or only an arena where representatives of nation states carry out their foreign policies? Does the EC operate effectively in the political arena or is its power limited to economic matters? The authors address these questions by dividing their subject matter up into EC relations with the advanced industrial societies, and relations with the developing countries. In the former category they examine EC external policy in agriculture and energy. In the latter category the EC's attempt to formulate a development policy is examined from six different per spectives. Regardless of the degree of common purpose and cohesion evident in the EC's activities, it clearly is an important actor for both the industrial and nonindustrial countries.