The European Commission´s investment plan – the so called Juncker Plan – aims to promote investments in the EU. In this European Policy Analysis, Daniel Tarchys explains the investment plan, which consists of three parts.

What, really, is the role of the European Commission? In this European policy analysis, researchers Mark Rhinard and Neill Nugent analyse the nature of the Commission. They pose the question of whether the Commission is more of a policy leader – charged with initiating policy and legislative proposals that will advance the interests of the EU as a whole – or more of an administrative body, charged with an array of executive tasks.

The Treaty of Lisbon introduced a mandate for the EU to develop a special relationship with its neighbouring countries. How has this mandate impacted, if at all, the so-called European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) which the Union had developed in the wake of its eastern enlargement? And more generally, how has the ENP evolved in view of the new realities on the ground? These are some of the questions that Professor Steven Blockmans explores in this tenth report which SIEPS publishes in the context of its research project The EU external action and the Treaty of Lisbon.

The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is a relatively recent add-on to the external action toolkit of the European Union. Introduced as a distinct policy framework cohabitating with that of the classic Community external relations, its hallmark remains its predominant intergovernmental nature.

The Common Commercial Policy (CCP) is perhaps the most expressive incarnation of the EU external action. The Treaty of Lisbon considerably revised this policy, both in substantive and institutional terms.

Even though the euro zone's problems play a less prominent role on the EU’s agenda in view of the Union's many crises in recent years, new disturbances may lead to the euro crisis quickly flaring up again. The Union is at a crossroads and may evolve in several different directions.

Foreign affairs have always involved a degree of secrecy and the EU external action is no exception. Out of security concerns and to protect the confidentiality of international negotiations, EU foreign policy actors such as the Council and the European External Action Service (EEAS) manage access to information by classifying documents as ‘secret’.

For some developing countries, the compensation for fisheries agreements with the European Union constitutes 30–50 per cent of the total government budget. In this report, Johan Blomquist, Cecilia Hammarlund and Staffan Waldo (AgriFood Economics Centre) analyse the effects of the EU’s partnership agreements with countries in Western Africa, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

The economic gains from EU membership is in theory fairly straightforward and above all related to having access to the internal market. However, it is much more complicated to show empirically that countries gain from being members of the Union.

According to the treaty, the EU´s policies for border control, asylum and immigration should be guided by a principle of solidarity and responsibility distribution. The EU has also decided that member states has a shared responsibility for asylum seekers, i.