Agreed but Contested : Normative Contestation and the Common Foreign and Security Policy

The EU has evolved over the last fifty years and, despite the obstacles, has become a consolidated international actor. The ”European” protagonism has shifted from the voluntary cession of sovereignty by States to a supranational institution capable of developing and implementing public policies that change the daily lives of citizens inside and outside the European continent. This situation led to the intertwined relationship between legal norms, moral values, and political considerations thru which the EU makes its internal principles part of its external relations. The present thesis seeks to account for these evolutions and, simultaneously, expose the importance of the study of norms in the functioning of the EU. On the assumption of the normative functioning that can be established or agreed upon in Brussels, the reality seems to give more and more space to acts of contestation on norms.