Human rights and EU external policy ten years after Lisbon: in search of unity

Today’s world provides a unique context for researching and assessing the role of international and regional organisations in a variety of areas. When the organisation at stake is the European Union and the area of investigation is human rights, the research gains an additional degree of complexity. One of the thorniest aspects of this challenge lies in the fragmentation of its External Action in terms of policies, aims, tools as well as in the imperfect nexus between internal and external policies. The tenth anniversary of the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty provides the momentum for assessing the developments occurred within the new legal framework and for investigating how human rights inform horizontally its broad external policy. In this contribution, we analyse some emerging issues by considering human rights from three different perspectives: human rights as common values to be promoted, as interests to be pursued and as obligations to be respected. It argues that, while there is a need for a better understanding of the human rights at stake and for joining up external and internal policies through human rights lens, both the legal framework and the European Union’s practice seem to support the existence of an obligation to protect and fulfil human rights worldwide, at least to the possible maximum extent allowed by the Treaties.