Rez. von Guasconi Maria Eleonora, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, University of Genova
In the last decade, a growing amount of literature has focused on the issue of the external relations of the European Community/European Union (EC/EU), thus linking European integration dynamics to broader international history.
This increasing interest towards the global role played by the EC/EU in the international system can be explained as a consequence of the debate on its peculiar nature, neither a state, nor a traditional international organization, but it also depends on the major internal and external threats which the European Union is actually facing.
Much of the literature dedicated to the EU’s external relations generally focuses on the post-Maastricht period onwards, considering the external relations of the European Community and its international role only as a prologue to the establishment of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in 1992.
The volume “Europe’s Cold War Relations” fills this gap, dealing with the role played by the European Community in the international system from the Treaty of Rome to the Treaty of Maastricht and attempts to demonstrate how the EC became an actor in world affairs during the Cold War and what kind of actor.
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