The Law of EU External Relations ─ Cases, Materials, and Commentary on the EU As an International Legal Actor

The two years since publication of the first edition of The Law of EU External Relations: Cases, Materials, and Commentary on the EU as an International Actorhave been characterized by the large amount of case law on the new provisions on external relations, which have found their way into the Lisbon Treaty. Moreover, there have been important changes in EU secondary law on external relations as a consequence of these changes to the Lisbon Treaty. In this second edition, new case law and legislative developments are critically discussed and analyzed in this comprehensive collection of EU Treaty law.

Combining chapters on the general basis of the Union's external action and its relation to international law, with chapters which further explore the law and practice of the EU in the specialized fields of external action, this book presents the law of EU external relations in a concise and accessible manner for students, practitioners, and academics in the field. Topics include the common commercial policy, development cooperation, cooperation with third countries, humanitarian aid, the enlargement and neighborhood policies, the external environmental policy, and the common foreign and security policy.

Carefully selected primary documents are accompanied with analytic commentary on the issues they raise and their significance for the overall structure of EU external relations law. The primary materials selected include many important legal documents that are hard to find elsewhere but give a vital insight into the operation of EU external relations law in practice.

Pieter Jan Kuijper, Professor of the Law of International Organizations, University of Amsterdam,Jan Wouters,Jean Monnet Chair EU and Global Governance, University of Leuven,Frank Hoffmeister,Head of Unit at DG Trade of the European Commission and Professor of Law at the Free University ofBrussels, ,Geert De Baere, Assistant Professor of International Law and EU Law, Institute for European Law and Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, University of Leuven,Thomas Ramopoulos,European Commission; Research Fellow, Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies,

Pieter Jan Kuijper returned in September 2007 to the University of Amsterdam as Professor of the Law of International Organizations after more than twenty years in the service of the European Commission, latterly as Principal Legal Advisor and Director of the External Relations and Trade Law team of the Commission Legal Service. He has also been director of the Legal Affairs Division of the WTO Secretariat (1999-2002). During his years as practitioner of international law he has continued to teach,inter alia at the University of Amsterdam and at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. His publications have concentrated on Community law, WTO law, and general international law and the relationship between them. He is a member of several professional societies and of the Board of Editors and Advisory Board of different international and Community law reviews.


Jan Wouters is Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet ChairAd Personam EU and Global Governance, and founding Director of the Institute for International Law and of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, an interdisciplinary centre of excellence, at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). As Visiting Professor at Sciences Po (Paris), Luiss University (Rome), and the College of Europe (Bruges) he teaches EU external relations law. He is a Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts, is President of the United Nations Association Flanders Belgium, and practises law as Of Counsel at Linklaters, Brussels. He is Editor of theInternational Encyclopedia of Intergovernmental Organizations, Deputy Director of theRevue Belge de Droit International and an editorial board member in ten international journals.

Frank Hoffmeister studied law in Frankfurt, Geneva and Heidelberg (1989-1994) and received a PhD. at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign Public Law and International Law (1998). Between 1998 and 2001 he researched and taught as University Assistant at the Walter Hallstein-Institute for European Constitutional Law at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. He then entered the European Commission, first as Cyprus desk at DG Enlargement and afterwards as a member of the Legal Service, where he specialised on international law and WTO issues. In 2010, he became the Deputy Head of Cabinet of EU Trade Commissioner De Gucht, and as of 2010 he is Head of Unit dealing with anti-dumping at DG Trade. Besides, Frank teaches international economic law at the Free University University of Brussels and has published numerous articles on European and international law topics.

Geert De Baere is Associate Professor of International Law and EU Law at the Institute for European Law and the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies at the University of Leuven. He studied law at the University of Antwerp (Cand. Iuris, 1999 and Lic. Iuris, 2002) and at King's College, Cambridge (LL.M, 2003 and PhD, 2007). In 2005, he was a visiting research fellow at Columbia Law School's European Legal Studies Center, New York City. From 2007 to 2009, he worked as a referendaire in the chambers of Advocate General Sharpston at the Court of Justice of the EU, while being a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Antwerp.


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