Briefing paper: Foreign Policy in the News

Foreign Policy and Awareness of Foreign Issues in the European Press

One of the important questions in identifying the rationale behind European Union action as ‘a global player’ is: what drives EU Foreign Policy? This is a complex question because EU Foreign Policy is an area where the EU acts on an intergovernmental basis, but which is also affected by policy areas such as Trade, External Relations, Energy, Migration and Asylum, Agriculture, Fisheries, Development Assistance and Humanitarian Aid, where the EU acts at EU level.

The creation of the European External Action Service in 2010 has maybe changed some of the internal
architecture in terms of the how of external action and foreign policy; but the underlying questions: why does the EU do what it does in terms of foreign policy, and maybe more importantly, why doesn’t it do the things it doesn’t do, still remain.

The paper starts from the premise that our perception of foreign places is shaped – at least in part – by the news stories we read in the press. What we did set out to do was to find out how foreign news is presented in printed news media in several EU Member States.

Download the Briefing Paper – Read here our findings and conclusions from a study of 23 broadsheet papers in 9 EU Member States