Conflict or Convergence?

In 2010’s The Foreign Policy of the European Union, Federiga Bindi concluded that the lack of institutional coherence within the European Union was reflected in its lack of a unified foreign policy. In the wake of the Lisbon Treaty and the Arab Spring, Bindi and coeditor Irina Angelescu have teamed with an international roster of foreign policy experts to address the challenges and advantages that the treaty and contemporary international challenges pose for successful formulation and execution of an EU foreign policy.

Conflict or Convergence? analyzes the degree of policy convergence—and divergence—among a select group of EU member states on topical issues (e.g., energy security and defense) and toward specific countries and regions, including the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The first section of the book presents the EU position on these issues, providing a basis for a comparison with those of individual member states. Finally, the book juxtaposes EU foreign policy to that of the United States, Russia, China, Brazil, India, Turkey, and Egypt.

Contributors include:

• • Giovanni Andornino (University of Torino),

• • Dr. Simone Dossi (Torino World Affairs Institute),

• • Stefan Bielanski (University Jagiellonski, Krakow),

• • David Cadier (Sciences Po, Paris),

• • Come Carpentier (Euro-Asia Institute),

• • Khalid Emara (Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs),

• • Marcos A. Guedes de Oliveira (University of Pernanbuco, Brazil),

• • Erik Jones (Johns Hopkins-SAIS, Bologna),

• • Jonas Parello-Plesner (European Council on Foreign Relations),

• • John Peet (The Economist),

• • Lazzaro Pietragnoli (freelance journalist),

• • Joaquin Roy (University of Miami),

• • Jan Techau (Carnegie Europe),

• • Dmitri Trenin (Carnegie Moscow),

• • Raffaele Trombetta (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs),

• • Carlo Viviani (Italian Regulation for Energy and Gas),

• • Kurt Volker (Johns Hopkins–SAIS, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO),

• • Nathalie Tocci (Institute of International Affairs, Rome),

• and Bernard Yvars (University of Montesquieu, Bordeaux).

Federiga Bindi holds the Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and is a Fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Bindi held several policy appointments in government, including serving as Senior Advisor to Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, and as Fellow in the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee under Sen. John Kerry’s chairmanship. Bindi was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2008-2010.