Paper Titles & Abstracts

The creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) had raised hopes that the new service would impose itself as a functional and respected institution within the pre-existing landscape of external relations in Brussels, the European capitals, and abroad. It had also raised hopes that the new structure would be able to "deliver", by bringing more coherence, presence and visibility to the EU's external relations.The first set of expectations have concentrated most of the attention, and led to the development of a budding yet rich literature on the institutionalisation of the EEAS, while the second remains less debated until today. After two years of setting up and budding experience of the EEAS, it is possibly still too early to assess in a categorical way the added value of the service, or its deep impact on the EU's external relations.It is however possible and necessary to question how the still ongoing institutional and bureaucratic changes impact, or not, the conditions of elaboration of the EU's Common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and its content. Does the EEAS example provide new insights on the possible links between institutional changes and policy shifts? Does it reversely indicate path dependency trends that nuance the added-value of institutional or bureaucratic evolutions in a given political, historical and strategic environment?This paper aims at offering first assessments of the impact of the EEAS on the trends and patterns of the EU's CFSP, and suggests ideas for further evaluation of the impact of the EEAS.Its ultimate ambition is to contribute to the understanding of the specific engines, paths and process of European integration in the field of foreign, security and defence policy.