The Limits of the EU's Foreign Policy by Way of an Example of Building Palestinian Statehood

The bachelor thesis "The Limits of the European Union's Foreign Policy by Way of an Example of Building Palestinian Statehood" addresses issues of effective performance of the EU foreign policy during the process of building an independent state of Palestine. The attention is paid to internal and external influences affecting its formation. The text is divided into four parts, the first of which sets out a general concept of foreign policy and concentrates on genesis of cooperation among member states in the sphere of foreign policy. The second chapter analyses internal factors (i.e. institutional mechanisms and attitudes of EU member states) having a limiting impact on an effective performance of the European foreign policy. The third part defines analogously external limits given by the interaction between the EU and other global and regional political actors of the international scene. In the last chapter these limits are demonstrated on the case of the reaction of the international community to the electoral victory of Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections held in January 2006. The aim of this thesis is to find the answer to the research question, which factors limit the performance of the European foreign policy to a larger extent, whether internal ones originating in the institutional..