Paper Titles & Abstracts

The objective of this paper is to analyse if and to what extent provisions of the new Lisbon Treaty: Art. 8 introducing "a special relationship with neighbouring countries" and CFSP-related references, have delivered in strengthening EU's presence among its Eastern Neighbours, as well as EU's capacities in decision- and policy-making towards them. An initial hypothesis is that the Treaty introduces a 'creeping revolution': 'revolution', because the 'novelties': instruments and concepts for managing EU's external relations are unprecedented; 'creeping', as it will take decades to uncover their deeper potential. The study results discover that what characterizes the EEAS and thus EU's international actorness in the ENP East are: (i) scarcity of staff in Headquarter in Brussels, (ii) scarcity of staff in EU Delegations, (iii) underrepresentation of 'new Member States', (iv) lack of esprit du corps. All of these troublesome produce 'turf battles' of various intra- and inter- nature on the EU-level, which lead to an extension of the decision-making process, and in consequence undermine the possible impact on the Eastern Neighbours. The conclusion is that although the aim of the Lisbon Treaty was to create coherence and effectiveness within EU's external activity, nonetheless, it has not been achieved. The EEAS must learn to combine multi-level/multi-layer/multi-location structures (de Vasconcelos 2007) of multi-stakeholder (Hocking 2007) diffused and decentralized 'post-globalist' (Jönsson, Hall 2005) diplomacy.