Europeanization of foreign policy: Whither Central Europe?

Abstract

The entry of Central European (CE) countries into the European Union (EU) has been characterized by Europeanization understood as deep, broadbased, and regionally relatively coherent adaptation processes and socialization into a set of EU standards of policymaking and governance (Ágh 1999; Schimmelfennig 2001; Sedelmeier 2001; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005; Fink-Hafner 2007). This chapter argues that foreign policymaking constitutes an important exception from this pattern, which not only calls for a rethinking of the concept of Europeanization, but also alerts us to the need to think of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as a policy domain characterized by local and varying patterns of adaptation in the member states.