In this revised edition of "The Foreign Policy of the European Union" Federiga Bindi and her contributors - some of the most representative scholars in the field - address the EU's relations with particular geographic regions and its policies on specific topical issues such as security and defense, as well as economic competitiveness. In a relatively short amount of time, the European Union has become one of the world's most powerful and important actors on the world stage, playing a critical role in the current geopolitical arena. The events of the Arab Spring and the Eurozone crisis, however, have come to test the EU's willingness and preparedness to tackle these challenges as a unitary actor with one single voice. The EU's internal transformations and international challenges raise a series of questions for the future of its foreign policy: Can there in fact be a cohesive "foreign policy" for a union composed of twenty-seven member states? If so, how does this foreign policy manifest? In which way has the Lisbon Treaty contributed to enhancing the EU's competencies and institutional structure in the field of foreign policy? What are the goals and priorities of the EU's foreign policy, and what has it contributed to the development of human rights, peace, democracy, and regional integration in other parts of the world? This book addresses these crucial issues. Praise for the first edition: "One of the most comprehensive studies of the EU foreign policy to date. The EU's foreign policy is not an easy subject to tackle, but the contributors do it in an elegant and cogent manner". (Luciano Bardi, University of Pisa, and president of the European Consortium for Political Research).