EU Actorship in the Non-Proliferation area : An Analysis

Abstract: The threat of nuclear weapons is depicted by the EU as the potentially greatest threat to security. How then does the EU counter this threat, i.e. what kind of actor is the EU in this area? To answer that question, this paper sets out to discover if the EU is an actor in the non-proliferation area, and if that is positively confirmed, what kind of an actor the EU depicts itself to be. Using the actorship framework, developed by Hettne, Söderbaum and Stålgren, it looks into the regionness, presence and actorness of the EU on this issue, to capture both internal and external aspects. The paper concludes that the EU can be defined as an actor on non-proliferation, and that it depicts itself as having a high level of regionness and presence, and gets a mixed result in the area of actorness. The paper also contributes to the theoretical framework by pointing out three aspects that the framework fails to take into consideration.