The European Union as a Small Power: After the Post-Cold War
 The EU is a response to and function of Europe’s unique historical experience. The past decade has shown that there is policy space for greater EU engagement in European security, although the EU has not been able to play all roles with the same degree of accomplishment. There are particular concerns over its security and defence dimension where attempts at pooling resources and forming a political consensus have failed to generate the results expected. These trends, combined with shifts in global power patterns, have been accompanied by a shift in EU strategic thinking whereby great-power ambitions have been scaled down and replaced by a tendency towards hedging vis-à-vis the leading powers. On an operational level the track record shows that the EU’s effectiveness is hampered by a ‘consensus– expectations gap’, owing primarily to the lack of an effective decision-making mechanism. The sum of these developments is that the EU will not be a great power, and is taking the place of one of the small powers in the emerging multipolar international order.(summarized on page 11).