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Methodology for Study of the EU as a Global Ttransformative Power
The research aimed to study EU as a global player. This included the instruments the EU relies on to express its priorities and achieve its objectives, EU methods to engage international partners, European ways to creating global public good through partnerships and multilateral institutions. The analysis focused especially on the EU’s evolving role in the G7/G8 over the last ten years reflecting its growth as soft power and the EU expanding community competencies and legal authority. The timeframe of the analysis spanned the period from 1998 to 2008 to account for the most important developments following signing of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, birth and development of the ESDP and ESS, enlargement of the EU enhancing its representative weight in the international institutions, further extension of the EU competencies; as well as changing international
order, and not least of all the start of the G8 in 1998. It has to be noted that though the study focuses on the recent decade whereas the Amsterdam Treaty provisions on the CFSP entered into force in 1999 reinforcing the legal and institutional foundations of the MS political and security cooperation, the research could not ignore the historical role of the EC – EU in the G7/G8.
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