COMMON FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY

Historically, the first step was an ambitious attempt in 1954 to create a European Defence Community, which failed at the last minute.

This was followed in 1970 by a process called European Political Cooperation, whereby EU member countries tried to coordinate their positions on foreign policy issues of the day. Under this process, EU countries produced joint statements (but no action):

-         condemning acts of aggression and terror around the world;

-         supporting United Nations or other peace initiatives.

But on particularly sensitive issues, or where individual EU countries had special interests, no single voice could be found because decisions had to be unanimous.

In the last 15 years the Union has renewed its efforts to perform a political and security role more in line with its commercial and economic power. The regional conflicts that erupted after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and, more recently, the need to fight international terrorism have convinced EU leaders that they should create formal instruments of both diplomacy and intervention.

One of the problems was to agree how much authority for vital issues of foreign policy and security should be vested in the EU and its institutions and how much should be retained by member states. In the end, essential authority remains with the member states, although the European Commission and, to a lesser extent, the European Parliament, are associated with the process. However, the formula agreed still requires that key decisions be taken by unanimous vote – hard to achieve when there were 15 EU members, even more difficult with 25. 

The principle of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) was formalised in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. But the Union and the member states had done little to implement it when war broke out in former Yugoslavia a few months later. The Union tried unsuccessfully to broker a diplomatic deal to end the fighting. Without a European intervention capacity, EU countries could only intervene as part of the UN peacekeeping force and subsequently, under US leadership, as part of a Nato force – as they did in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The lessons of the Balkan conflicts have not been lost. The Union has acted since then on both the diplomatic and security fronts.

To give it diplomatic clout and visibility, the Union has created the post of High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and provided him with a far-reaching support structure, including a policy unit to provide assessments and early warnings on crisis situations, a political and security committee and a military committee. The EU maintains a strong presence on the ground and has dispatched special representatives to several of the world’s hotspots, including the Great Lakes (Africa), the Middle East, the Balkans and Afghanistan.

As part of the CFSP, the Union also created a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) with the potential, if agreed later on, for creating a common defence structure. In December 2003, EU leaders adopted a European Security Strategy and have since agreed on its basic mission and priority areas for action: the fight against terror; a Middle East strategy; a comprehensive policy on Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The first three ESDP missions have been in the former Yugoslavia: on 1 January 2003 the European Union Police Mission of 500 officers took over in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a period of three years aiming at training local police officers and establishing sustainable policing arrangements in line with European standards and practice. The second operation was the EU military force, and subsequently a 200-strong EU police mission in Macedonia. The biggest of the three started in December 2004, when an EU military force (EUFOR) of 8 000 troops took over from the NATO-led Security Force (SFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Where to go from here

With the CFSP and ESDP, the Union is creating a political dimension to add to its international role as a major commercial and economic power. But there is still a long way to go before the scale of this political dimension becomes clear. Despite their commitment to making a success of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, member governments sometimes find it hard to change their own national policy regarding a particular country or region in the name of EU solidarity. Although the Union has introduced flexibility into voting procedures on CFSP decisions by allowing individual governments to abstain, or by using majority voting, or by allowing a majority of countries to act on their own, unanimity is still required on decisions with military or defence implications.

Source: http://europa.eu.int/pol/cfsp/overview_en.htm