Who Acts for the EU before and after the Lisbon Treaty? The View through the Media in Singapore and Thailand

This paper seeks to determine whether the EU has accomplished its objectives concerning the visibility of EU external action, which the Lisbon Treaty sought to achieve. The role of Catherine Ashton as the EU’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, together with the newly formed European External Action Service (EEAS) which supports her work, aimed to “effectively project European values and interests worldwide” (Šefčovič, n.d.) and to make Europe “an actor on the global stage” (Europa, n.d.). Despite the sui generis nature of the internal functioning of the EU, there is a strong case in academic literature that the EU can be studied as an international actor like any other state actor. Southeast Asia, represented in this article by Singapore and Thailand, is a key region to test whether the post-Lisbon EU has reached the status of a key actor on the global stage. The findings from media research carried out in 2006 and 2011 (i. e. before and after the Lisbon Treaty) suggest that the EU has failed to achieve its stated aims.