The European network of strategic partnerships : becoming or creating an international actor?

Abstract

In 2010 the European Union launched a policy of strategic networking on a global level. This decision was empowered by the necessity to prove that the Lisbon treaty provisions on the EU as an International actor were not just official discourse. USA, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, China, India, South Africa, South Korea and Japan were called strategic partners of the EU. However, these partners acknowledged the incapacity to name European Union as a federation or confederation, as an inter-governmental or supranational organization. Close strategic cooperation from the European perspective was seen as a possibility to take part in the design of the multipolar international system on the one hand, and on the other hand to shape its own international identity. In this context few aspects are important for the European Union: 1) legal basis for being a united strategic actor on the global level 2) recognition from other members of the international system, and 3) just bilateral cooperation with USA, Russia and China.