Changing the appropriate?
Abstract: The treaty of Lisbon introduced several significant institutional changes to the EU. The main research question of this thesis is therefore the following: How has the institutional changes in the treaty of Lisbon affected how the EU debates norms and what norms the EU refers to? In order to approach the research problem this thesis uses a comparative case study design which looks at how the EU debate and refer to norms before and after the adoption of the treaty of Lisbon. The method used is a form of qualitative content analysis which analyses the transcripts of speeches made by the EU in the UN. The results of this thesis are that we cannot observe any clear changes in how norms are referred to and discussed in the UN. This suggests that changes in formal institutions do not affect how actors debate and refer to norms. We should also not expect to see any changes in the immediate time period.
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