The Council of Ministers is arguably the most powerful of the EC's institutions, yet its operation still awaits an authoritative analysis. To date, research into the operation of the Council has tended only to deal with aspects of its structure, rather than analysing it as a complete body. Furthermore, there has been little theoretical appreciation of its internal operation, as research has tended to rely on existing methods of analysing EC policy-making. Therefore, a new methodological approach seems to be required which will address this lacuna in EC literature. Whilst the Council of Ministers legislates, it also negotiates. It would seem appropriate then to design a new approach that draws on both policy analysis and negotiation theory. The analytical framework used material drawn from interviews, and both primary and secondary written sources, to evaluate the day-to-day workings of a number of technical councils that constitute the Council of Ministers. Although there is an information deficit on the work of the Council, the flexible design of the framework allowed valuable insights into its operation. The findings gave some indication of the dynamics of the interactions between member states, which provides a better understanding of EC policymaking. The Council of Minister's character is influenced by member states. Their attitudes seem to have a strong effect upon the operational mechanisms of the various technical councils The Council may be an EC institution, but it is also the forum in which member states negotiate, preferring the diplomatic, consensus approach to prescriptive voting methods.

This study focuses on the protection and promotion of human rights in the context of the external relations of the European Union (EU). It sets out to examine, in particular, the position of human rights within the framework of EU foreign policy. While questions of human rights sparked a wide-ranging academic debate and resulted in enhanced levels of public scrutiny over the last decade, the research presented in this dissertation attempts to fill a significant gap in scholarly attention. It does so by offering a critique of the theoretical approaches towards, and the practical manifestations of human rights promotion initiatives in the context of EU policy interaction with countries in Asia. Evidence from previous work, included as part of this dissertation, suggests that the incremental growth of human rights competencies and agendas within the EU's legal and political systems was reflected in a number of areas of concrete EU external activity, such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), Development Policy, relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries and the EU's New Asia Strategy. This dissertation attempts to demonstrate how, in the context of a Constructivist perspective within International Relations Theory in general, and EU-Asia relations in particular, the EU can be conceptualised as a value-guided, 'ethical' polity, grounded in a constitutional framework of Treaties. As a result of this, the Union introdued a more pronounced human rights dimension to its dialogue with Asia. The evidence indicates that, in respect of its Asian partners, the EU implemented human rights strategies in a number or formats and with varying degrees of success. The study scrutinises, in particular, the Commission's 'strategy papers' on Asia and the Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM). In addition to findings analysed in previous work, this study demonstrates that the resulting debates about 'rights' and 'values' can be related to wider discourses derived from normative theory and surrounding issues of culture and identity. In the Asia-EU dialogue, arguments over human rights contain the potential to be both an enabling dynamic for, and an inhibiting agent of, a more intensive EU-Asia political and cultural dialogue. The study places a particular emphasis on EU human rights promotion policies towards the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Indonesia and Burma (The Union of Myanmar). It identifies and appraises three distinct EU policy approaches ranging from incentives based and coordinated measures to a more coercive and punitive diplomatic arsenal.

This thesis examines the role of the European Community in the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. From their first dealings up until 1968 – when official relations were established – and beyond, the Community and Yugoslavia never achieved a stable relationship that would have come into its own with the outbreak of the Yugoslav crisis in the early 1990s. In this respect, economic, political and social dimensions characterizing cooperation between the EC and the SFRY are analyzed to illustrate the developments between the two parties. The outbreak of the Yugoslav crisis was a completely new phenomenon for Brussels. Although admittedly unprepared, EC officials stated that ‘the hour for Europe has come’. This eleventh-hour intervention, however, opened the door to certain non-state actors who became involved and, more importantly, affected the decision-making at EC level leading to the policy of recognition of Slovenia and Croatia as independent states, and thus the demise of the Yugoslav federation. The thesis focuses on the activism of diaspora communities, the media and the Catholic Church. As far as the diaspora communities are concerned, their activism was most significant in Austria, a country that enjoyed an outstanding reputation within the European Community at the time. The Carinthian Slovenes used their position within Austrian politics to promote the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. As to the Western media, their reporting of the Yugoslav crisis, with its sympathy for the independence of the two republics, was accepted as a reliable source of information, a view confirmed by statements from Brussels. Finally, the Catholic Church also expressed sympathy for Slovenia and Croatia: the fact that the two SFRY republics were Catholic was reason enough for the Vatican to campaign for their independence at EC level.