Promoting National Priorities in EU Foreign Policy: The Czech Republic s Foreign Policy in the EU

How do smaller member states promote their interests in EU foreign policy and external relations?

EU membership can be seen to affect member states’ foreign policy in two ways, either by restricting national policies or empowering states in a challenging global environment. There is a general agreement, however, that the member states, especially smaller ones, have to engage actively in policy-making in order to promote their particular interest.

This cross-policy comparison of the behaviour of Czech Republic’s representatives in the Council and the methods they use to influence the decision-making applies categorisation from lobbying literature to analyse the behaviour of the member state’s representatives and contributes to two strands of scholarship on European Union politics - decision-making in the EU and Europeanization. The book maps the methods of interest promotion that can be used by a member state and analyses the differences in interest promotion across external policy areas.

Dr. Tomáš Weiss is the Head of the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. In his teaching and research, he focuses on EU foreign and security policy, transatlantic relations, and the impact of EU membership on the member states, particularly the Central European countries. He has published in various peer-reviewed journals, including Cooperation & Conflict, Armed Forces & Society, Geopolitics, and Perspectives. He is the author of a book on Czech security policy published with Charles University Press in 2014 and of a number of book chapters in Czech and English, including with Routledge. He has taken part in a number of international and national research projects. Since 2014, he has been an external (honorary) advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.