Small States of the European Union and Brexit

This book seeks to offer a better understanding of the strategic responses to Brexit from ten small European Union (EU) member states: Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia.

Inspired in an intersection of different streams of research, it examines the extent and the ways Brexit has impacted these countries, analysing their coping strategies to deal with the challenges raised by such a disruptive development, as well as considering the implications of their reactions to Brexit for patterns of national foreign policy Europeanization. In so doing, this volume enhances the comprehension of smaller EU member states’ foreign and security policies, offering a systematic and comparative analysis of how political and diplomatic elites in ten countries positioned themselves domestically and within the EU vis-à-vis the Brexit process. A combination of conceptual insights, valuable empirical accounts and updated knowledge on contemporary issues from such interesting set of case studies provides room for debate on the comparability of the way(s) in which different small countries have approached their Brexit strategies. All these aspects are explored with respect to states that have been relatively neglected and underexplored in the small states literature.

This edited volume will be of great value to upper-level students, academics, and researchers interested in European politics, foreign policy and international relations. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

Laura C. Ferreira-Pereira is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Minho, Portugal; and Visiting Professor of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She has published extensively on EU foreign security and defence policy (CFSP/CSDP), and Portuguese foreign policy in several renowned scientific journals.