This book argues that theories of European foreign policy are performative: they create the objects they analyse.The book first outlines the performativity approach to the role of theories based on the work of Derrida. It then examines the performative role of Christopher Hill's concept of Capability-Expectations Gap in the study of European foreign policy. Through examples from the literature, it is shown that the concept sets up standards for the EU as a foreign policy actor that are not met by most other international actors and that this curtails analysis of EU foreign policy. It then demonstrates that the widespread use of the concept of ‘gap’ in different forms affects the way in which EU foreign policy has been studied and that it always produces the same result: the EU is an unfulfilled actor outside the realm of “normal” actors in IR.