Paper Titles & Abstracts

The Lisbon Treaty formally changed the representation of the European Union abroad by upgrading the former EC delegations to comprehensive EU delegations and putting the High Representative in the centre of a more strategic and effective implementation of EU foreign policy objectives. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty the topic of EU diplomatic representation gained new momentum and political salience, while coordination between EU member states towards international organisations or third countries is only sporadically covered in the academic literature. Comparing the (non-)coordination efforts between different policy areas allows to draw conclusions about when member states seek to use the EU as a negotiation partner with the US, and when they rather prefer to "go it alone" and negotiate as national delegation.This paper investigates empirically patterns of coordination, cooperation and contacts between EU member states' embassies vis-à-vis the United States in Washington DC. It examines empirically the coordination between the member states but also their interaction with the EU delegation in Washington. These processes of coordination between member states are investigated in terms of mechanisms (how) but also in terms of policy content and necessary conditions (when), by building specifically upon the guiding questions of the panel proposal about conditions for coordination, coordination patterns, and the upgraded role of the EU delegation.