As the European Union is not a nation state, it is not generally perceived to have a foreign policy. However, this book argues that quite the reverse is true: that an overemphasis on procedure and structures has disguised the fact that the EU has a clear foreign policy that can be analysed in much the same way as that of the sovereign state.

Conventional assessments of the EU focus on the mechanisms, institutions and treaties through which policies are implemented. Smith shows how this can lead to a massive underestimation of the capacities of the EU. Rather than concentrating on how the policy of the EU is made, Smith investigates the action that it has engaged in abroad, and the nature of its diverse global interventions - in relation to the United States and the industrialised North, the various regions of the South and, most recently, its huge involvement in east and central Europe and the entire European continent.

Developing a pathbreaking analysis of the nature of EU foreign policy, this comprehensive account shows how the EU can be very effective indeed in promoting its own domestic interests abroad.