The reforms which have been implemented following the Treaty of Lisbon contributed to a greater efficiency and operativeness of the EU’s foreign policy. However, developments in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and elsewhere showed that the undertaken actions are still insufficient and should be continued not only on the institutional or legal level but first of all in the procedural and political sphere. One of the many shortcomings of the EU’s foreign policy is a lack of a universal and clear model by means of which the essence, specificity and evolution of this policy could be analyzed. The object of the paper is to show several selected ways of presenting the components and determinants that shape the EU’s foreign policy and to create a model as an attempt to systematize the above issues. A further object is to demonstrate that the EU’s foreign policy, contrary to the opinion frequently expressed today by representatives of political elites or the academia, cannot be reduced to a mere sum of the foreign policies of particular member states. It includes also a range of other elements such as, among others, the goals and actions of EU institutions and ongoing changes in the international milieu or within the EU itself.
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