European External Action

Veit Bachmann is Director of the EuroGaps research group that examines external relations and external perceptions of the EU in sub-Saharan Africa and the Black Sea Region based in the Department of Human Geography at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany. More generally, his research interests are in political geography, (critical) geopolitics, European studies and global North-South relations with a focus on the international identity and role of the EU as a global and development actor.

Contents: Introduction: an emerging EU diplomacy? Part One External Relations at a Critical Moment: Instruments of conduct of European external relations; European geopolitical discourse and the EU as a 'model' in times of crisis; External dimensions of Europeanisation and regulated spaces of interaction; An institutional ethnography of the sites of diplomatic conduct in Nairobi; Methodological remarks: data acquisition in the networked places of EU diplomacy in Nairobi. Part Two The Service in Action - Establishing Collective Diplomacy in Nairobi: Positioning collective Europe abroad: operating EU diplomacy; Perceiving collective Europe abroad: interaction with the 'partners'; What should the EU do? Expectations of the EU as a geopolitical actor; The EU's global role: what happened to the model?; Conclusion: a less global and a more European Union? References; Index.