Keynote speech given at the 39th Annual Conference of the EU Studies Association-Japan on 17th November 2018 at Dokkyo University. “The EU as a Global Actor in a Changing World”

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and I think I can say friends of the European Union, I would like to thank you for inviting me to the EU Gakkai Annual Conference today. It is a particular pleasure to speak here because I know that you are very important to the European Union and the EU Delegation because you are in a sense our antennas, our collaborators, our friends throughout the academic world here in Japan and therefore it is my pleasure to join you here for your annual conference. The title of my short intervention is the EU as a Global Actor in a Changing World. Let me first start by saying that there can be no question that the world today is full of many challenges. It is one where we have to question old certainties. Where some alliances or partnerships suddenly seem uncertain and insecure, and where we also face a number of global challenges such as climate change, pollution, as well as threats such as the proliferation of nuclear arms. These challenges and threats are all of a nature where one can easily see that no single state or country can deal with them alone. We have also to take into account that the whole post-World War II order was actually built around a multilateral and international system with the United Nations at its core and what we see today are efforts