THE EU-ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP The European Union’s power projection in the Middle East.

Abstract: The thesis aims to study what kind of power the EU seeks to project in its foreign policy relationship with the state of Israel and adds to the research field by testing the foreign policy diplomacy through speeches and official documents against the normative power theory as well as the market power theory. Previous research speak of the asymmetrical political relationship between the two actors because of the Israeli governments’ belief that the Union is “pro-Arab”, the financial and trade relationship since the EU is Israel’s number one trading partner and finally the theories within the research field of what kind of global power Union is. The theories used in the analysis are that of normative power theory and the market power theory. Normative power is the most common assumed external power used by the Union while the market power theory has not been applied to this specific angle of the relationship before and can therefore add to the research field by showing traces of a strategy where the European Single Market is the main source of power for the Union. A qualitative idea analysis was used to analyze and use the indicators given by the theoretical framework and to better understand and detect messages in the material. The material consisted of eight speeches, two of them Commission hearings, made by both Commissioners, Presidents of the Commission as well as High Representatives of the Foreign Affairs and Security Policy council. These were complemented with three official documents published by the Commission. The material consists largely of speeches to get verbal examples of the Unions sought power projection, the documents complement the verbal statements with additional legal evidence of what has been established and not in the relationship between the two actors. The results were dispositioned by two sub-headings where all the findings of normative- or market power were reported under one heading each. It is established that the normative power theory is the most notable theory among the speeches made by Presidents, Commissioners and High Representatives. The market power theory made itself most known among the official documents, where the Union openly speaks of the European Single market as the ideal market, and something the rest of the world will want to follow. The conclusion then discusses the findings and the two research questions which is that the Union indeed speaks with an ongoing theme of normative power, but that the speeches and documents both still hold traces of both theories, and that this would be relevant for future research of the EU-Israel relationship to look further into.