ABSTRACT
The Introduction summarises the general topic of the book and presents the argument in brief. It argues that the European Commission used its exclusive competence in trade on the EU level to purposefully negotiate ever wider and institutionally deeper bilateral trade agreements with countries all over the world, primarily but not only in Asia and Latin America and beginning in the 1970s. This served to increase the EU's – and thereby the Commission's own – external action capability, allowing the Commission to integrate the EU's external dimension to become a truly global political actor and to assume an increasingly assertive role in a world historically dominated by nation states. The Introduction details the book's contributions to the literature, research design, methodology, and sources. It ends with an overview of all chapters of the book to facilitate selective reading.
