Composed of 413 articles, 37 protocols and 65 declarations, for a total of more than 400 pages, the new European treaties amended by the Treaty of Lisbon are not easy to read. Besides, the fact that these articles do not have any title helping to identify the topic treated is another factor which complicates the reading.

The articles which directly concern the area of external relations are more than 60, to which it is necessary to add other general dispositions involving, amongst others, the external relations of the Union. In such a complex frame, the reader will be easily lost. In order to face these difficulties, GRIP has decided to collect all the dispositions of the Treaty on EU (TEU) and of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) which regards the external policy.

The collection is not limited to the articles which specifically address the external policy of the Union. It includes also several other dispositions scattered among the articles, protocols and declarations, which are essential to understand the EU competences outside its borders (for example the institutional dispositions, the articles concerning the power sharing between the EU and the Member States, the articles concerning the enhanced cooperation, the dispositions on justice which involve also the external relations, etc.).

As a consequence, the document is long, but complete. In order to facilitate its reading, the following structure has been adopted:

• A title indicating the content of each articles has been inserted between brackets;
  
  
• A table of contents including all articles of the collection (with their title indicating their subject) has been inserted at the beginning of the document, in order to help the reader to guide its research in a more efficient way;
  
  
• When an article also concerns other subjects, the part concerning EU external relations is underlined. On the other hand when the articles exclusively concern the EU external relations, their numbers and titles are underlined.