Towards a Confident Europe: Fostering European Foreign Policy as a Premise to Enhanced European Economic Security & Competitiveness

Abstract The present research comes to comprehensively analyse the path towards a confident Europe both in the regional and global environment by considering the necessity of European foreign policy consolidation as an imminent premise to enhanced European economic security & competitiveness. Despite of multiple competing political and economic interests, socio-cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, and historical animosities, the only choice of the European Union's nations to maintain and improve their current regional and global politico-economic positions resides in their capacity to act jointly through a unique representation. Accordingly, the results of the present research explicitly underline the idea that: as long as the “influence” centre of the European Union will be dispersed among national governments, each of them promoting individual interests contrary to the groups’ ones, the community as an integrational block will face important difficulties in defending its regional and global positions. The qualitative analysis undertaken highlights the idea that the European Union in the present form and institutional arrangements is not able to provide feasible and efficient solutions to the current and future challenges. This fact can be explicitly noted in the area of foreign affairs where the dualism between national and supranational bodies makes the European Union to falter on key directions including the Middle East, Eastern Partnership, the Russian Federation, and Turkey as well as on the global arena.