ECFR - European Foreign Policy Scorecard 2010

The European Foreign Policy Scorecard is an innovative project that provides a systematic annual assessment of Europe’s performance in dealing with the rest of the world. The scorecard assesses the performance of the EU institutions on 80 policy areas arranged around the six key themes below.

Click here for the PDF version of the Scorecard.

You can also get directly to the 6 issues assessed in the Scorecard by clicking on the links below, or navigate the document by clicking these links: Authors - Acknowledgements - Foreword - Preface - Introduction - Methodology - Abbreviations

China
C+	2010 was a sobering year for the EU as the reality of a new, more assertive China – and the EU’s limited leverage over it – set in. Europeans developed a new strategic approach to China but their coherence was undermined by bilateral tendencies of member states.

Russia
C+	In the past, the EU has tended to be divided between those that wanted to engage with Russia and those that wanted to contain it. But in 2010 the EU moved towards greater internal unity, largely as a result of the re-invigoration of cooperation between Germany and Poland.

United States
B-	The EU had significant successes when it identified its common interests and pursued them with the US in a single-minded way. However, member states sometimes still claim their own “special relationship” with the US and therefore sometimes lack unity.

Wider Europe
C+	As support for enlargement has declined, the EU’s leverage has decreased. Performance was good on the Western Balkans, mediocre on the eastern neighbourhood and poor on Turkey.

Crisis Management
B-	The EU responded well to the earthquake in Haiti, but there was little enthusiasm for new crisis management missions in a year in which cash-strapped European governments announced big defence cuts.

Multilateral issues
B+	2010 was a year of defensive success for the EU in the multilateral system. After its failure at the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009, it suffered some further setbacks but mounted an impressive fight-back on climate change and at the UN.

ECFR's European foreign policy scorecard 2010 was funded by

Read the foreword by Piero Gastaldo, Secretary General of Compagnia di San Paolo

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