Problem setting. Today the European Union interacts with the whole world and represents the interests and values of the European community far beyond one continent. Carrying out such activities provides for the existence of effective institutions for its implementation, which today are the European External Action Service and the European Uniondelegations around the world. It significantly differs from the classical manifestations of diplomacy, which determines the relevance of research into the establishment and development of the European Union diplomatic service. Moreover, understanding the process of formation and features of European Union diplomacy is interesting for domestic researchers of European Union law given the pro-European aspirations of Ukraine.
Analysis of recent researches and publications. Certain aspects of this topic have been studied by suchdomesticscientistsas F. Baranovsky, M. Hnatyuk, O. Grinenko, O. Gladenko, M. Entin, O. Opanasyuk-Radlinska, E. Ryaboshtan, D. Tkachenko, O. Turchenko, Y.Sergienko, V. Streltsova, G. Utko, O. Fisun, V. Tsivaty, V. Shamraeva, O. Shapovalova, etc.
Target of research is to research the basic preconditions and features of the establishment and development of the European Union diplomatic service and its functioning in today’s conditions.
Article’s main body. The article is devoted to the study of the main prerequisites and features of the establishment and development of the diplomatic service of the European Union. The authors paid attention to the coverage of the status, competence and procedure for sending the first representations of the Communities abroad, in particular the delegations of the European Commission. The changes made by the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Lisbon treaties on foreign policy are analyzed as well. All the reforms implemented by these treaties were aimed primarily at making the European Union more effective and coordinated in the international arena, and finally resolved the issue of the institutionalization of the body that deals with the European Union diplomatic service. So now it has the status of the European External Action Service and successfully performs its functions in the current conditions.
Conclusions and prospects for the development. The modern European Union diplomatic service is the result of a long process of formalization and institutionalization of a whole set of its foreign policy bodies. The development of the European Union representation system shows that the spread of its representative activities has become global, as well as the dynamic transformation of the content of its goals to interact with the world in order to implement its foreign policy.
However, despite the current and rapid dynamics of development and evolution of this institution, the question remains whether the European External Action Service is the final option for the external design of the European Union diplomatic service, or whether it will be another step in the process of building pan-European diplomacy.
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