THE MEDITERRANEAN POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY FORMS an important part of its general external policy. Since this paper can, therefore, be considered as a case study, it is worth trying to define at the outset the concept of ‘external policy’. The Treaties did not delegate to the common European institutions any of the powers of foreign policy-making traditionally exercised by the nation state, but the granting of wholesale economic competences and the consequential obligation of evolving a common commercial policy ensured that the Community would come into direct contact with non-member states. Through its diplomatic relations with other countries, the Community has become an actor on the international stage, whilst the scope of its external relations has frequently exceeded that of purely commercial policy. It is both meaningful and useful to consider the Community as exercising an external policy – a kind of half-way house to full foreign policy.