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Reading the reports from the last summit meeting on the EU budget, one could be forgiven for thinking that there were only three states that matter in EU decision making.
However, in foreign policy, the story behind the headline is increasingly the small states.
The European Council for Foreign Relations' (ECFR) European foreign policy scorecard tracks all the contributions - from EU institutions and the member states - that contribute to the impact of European foreign policy.
Amid a general trend which Scorecard 2013 shows towards member states co-operating on EU foreign policy (in 2012 there was a significant drop in the number of countries rated as slackers on specific policy questions, particularly starkly in the cases of Cyprus, Italy and Poland) a strong story also emerges on the role that smaller states can play in leading initiatives.
While leadership from the big three notably dropped last year, interesting coalitions of smaller member states were instrumental in developing and championing foreign policy initiatives.
A conversation with investigative reporters Stefano Valentino and Giorgio Michalopoulos, who have dissected the dark underbelly of green finance for Voxeurop and won several awards for their work.
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