Title
The EU concept of the "Strategic Partnership": Identifying the "unifying" criteria for the differentiation of Strategic Partners
Abstract
Strategic partnerships are an essential tool of the common foreign policy of the European Union (EU), which should help fulfil its strategic interest – to be an influential global actor, to share responsibility for global security, and together with partners to respond to the current global challenges. Considering that the EU has not yet defined the nature of the strategic partnership, the first objective of this paper is to identify the instrument from a general perspective and to distinguish it from the default category of cooperation. Linking strategic partnership with legal standards, however, allows for the setting of certain criteria of the concept of strategic partnerships for the EU with other key countries and to determine the variability of possible approaches to the specific concept. To define these criteria and the variety of strategic partnerships set by these criteria, is the second goal of the article. If an adequate alternative approach to the concept of the EU is assigned to each individual strategic partner, which is the third objective of this paper, the results indicate the significant diversity of strategic partners of the EU. Based on obtained results, it can be concluded that in order to clarify the concept of the EU’s strategic partnership, it is necessary to take steps that will lead to a gradual convergence of existing forms of strategic partnerships and their focus on strategic issues.
Keywords
cooperation, partnership, comprehensive partnership, strategic partnership, European Union (EU), EU external relations, United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, South Korea, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa
JEL classifications
F50 , F55 , F62 , P16 , P52
URI
http://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/485
DOI
Pages
1723-1739
Funding
This research was supported by two scientific projects: GAAA no. 9/2018 “Comparative Metodology and its Application by Examining the Specific International Business Environment (Case Study of China)”, funder: Grant Agency Academia Aurea, Czech Republic; and IGA no. 3/2017 “Development of International Busuness and International Management in the Conditions of Globalization”, funder: IGA of the School of Economics and Management in Public Administration).This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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