Browsing by Subject "EEAS"

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse The European Parliament (EP) as an actor of parliamentary diplomacy during its ninth parliamentary term, in the context of its relations with China. The relations between the EU and China have felt a major shift from the late 2010s onwards, and the EP has been increasingly vocal about Chinese human rights matters through its various resolutions and declarations. This thesis pursues to analyse the public outputs of the European Parliament through two research questions: How does the European Parliament operate as an actor of parliamentary diplomacy? and how is the European Parliament’s China policy characterized in its resolutions? while also comparing the EP’s public outputs to that of the EEAS’ through the question of How do the public outputs of the European Parliament compare to that of the EEAS’? This thesis relies heavily on the definition of parliamentary diplomacy and sees the European Parliament as an increasingly important actor in the multilayered and evolving international field. This thesis consists of focusing on the overview of foreign political conduct in the EU, the definition of parliamentary diplomacy, focusing on the European Parliament as an actor of parliamentary diplomacy along a case study. The case study of this thesis is an analysis of the EP’s resolutions, other publications & delegation work, and EEAS publications, divided into three subchapters. The methods used consist of coding along with qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The findings are, that the EP pursues to be a particularly vocal foreign political actor when it comes to China. The publications of China are increasingly negative by their nature, and in a way, it seems that the EP has abandoned the central idea of parliamentary diplomacy of conducting mutual relations, in favour of protecting its normative ideals. As part of its public outputs on China, the EP has also put much emphasis on the need for the EEAS to act in a particular way to tackle some of the China-related issues. The conclusion is, that the EEAS’ China policy does not seem to differ much from that of the EP, the clear exception seemingly being the case of Taiwan relations.