This article explores the EU's ability to frame the public debates about its external policies. The article begins by broadening the current discussions about the three aspects of actorness -legitimacy, attractiveness and recognition -by introducing the EU's framing power as a fourth aspect of actorness. Then it proceeds to an empirical analysis of framing, which is based on a discourse analysis of the news coverage of Ukraine in print media in the three biggest EU Member States (United Kingdom, Germany and France).

This article employs the concept of rhetorical action in an analysis of the recent developments in Czech-Russian political relations. Through the discourse analysis of key Russian political speeches and official documents related to the Czech Republic, as well as Czech speeches tackling the same issues, we look at two different rhetorical actions employed by Russia to induce changes in Czech policy. The attempts to make Czech policy unacceptable in the wider community of European democracies were only partially successful. While the first rhetorical action aimed against Czech NATO membership failed, the new diplomatic strategy stressing the need for a “normalization” of relations was successful in transforming Czech policy towards Russia.