Yet such approaches—which equate EU foreign policy with the structures of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)—unnecessarily restrict the scope of EU foreign policy research. First, an exclusive focus on the CFSP ignores many of the instruments that comprise EU foreign policy, such as enlargement, trade, or development aid. Second, this view also overlooks several of the EU’s institutional actors (for instance the European Commission or the European Parliament) whose power to influence the CFSP may be small, but who participate meaningfully in the EU’s activities abroad. Finally, the predilection to put institutions at the center of scholarship often misses the crucial role that specific individuals play in formulating and performing EU foreign policy.
This paper aims to fill this gap by looking at an under-researched institutional actor (the European Parliament), investigating the role that parliamentary diplomacy serves in carrying out EU foreign policy. It also aims to bring the individual back in, by exploring the way in which certain strong personalities have been able to make the Parliament a key player in EU foreign policy, and the ways in which the absence of such personalities inhibited this role.
