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EU foreign policy

With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 and its subsequent implementation, the European Union has gradually assembled the constituent elements of a sui generis 'foreign policy', bringing together various competencies, instruments and resources that were hitherto spread across different institutions and bodies. Although the process is still on-going and progress is, in parts, uneven, certain traits of a more coherent common approach to foreign policy-making are now evident. In the Balkans, the Horn of Africa (both offshore and onshore), the Sahel, or the Middle East, joint and combined forms of external action - including diplomacy, enlargement, CSDP and development activities - are now producing more effective and lasting results.

Analysing the specific actors, instruments, policies, and strategies at the disposal of the Union and assessing their scope and outreach is also a way to illustrate what the EU does in the world - something which is not always known or appreciated by those who directly benefit from its external action, or indeed by European citizens at large. Monitoring performance, in turn, also contributes to improving it, in a constructive manner and on the basis of factual evidence.

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  • 01October 2001
    11 September: Security and Defence revisited
    By

    Recent terrorist attacks in New York and Washington raise the question whether similar attacks could also take place in Europe. Is the threat of catastrophic terrorism the same for EU members as for the US? Or does it create different zones of security and vulnerability within NATO and the EU?...

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    01October 2001
    What status for Kosovo?
    By

    There is no doubt that the terrorist attacks of 11 September against America have drastically changed the international strategic order. It is not yet possible to discern the scale of this revolution, as new developments in the coming weeks may have further profound effects on the international system as a whole.

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    01October 2001
    Reconciling the prince's two 'arms'. Internal-external security policy coordination in the European Union
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    The blurring of the distinction between internal and external security, and the connected impulse towards better coordination between the correspondent policy fields, are among the fundamental structural changes in international relations that have occurred during the last decades. Such overall trends were accentuated and made particularly evident in Western Europe by progress in supranational integration.

  • 27September 2001
    L’Europe doit repenser l’Union
    By

    L’énorme cacophonie stratégique qui n’en finit pas d’émerger des ruines du World Trade Center affectera aussi les règles et la dynamique traditionnelles de la construction européenne. Moteurs d’intégration accrue, les attentats du 11 septembre le seront au moins pour trois raisons.

  • 01September 2001
    Enlargement and European security after 11 September
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    What consequences may the terrorist acts of 11 September have for EU enlargement? Will they facilitate it or make it more complicated? And what is likely to be their overall impact on pan-European security?

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    01July 2001
    Developing the 'moral' arguments: Russian rhetorical strategies on security post-Kosovo?
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    This paper analyses how the Russian top leadership’s rhetoric on security and the West evolved during and after NATO’s Operation Allied Force against Serbia in 1999. By grasping the logic inherent in political rhetoric, one can arrive at a better understanding of the messages that a political actor is trying to convey.

  • 21May 2001
    Enlarging Europe: CFSP perspectives. 21-22 May 2001

    A seminar entitled ‘Enlarging Europe: CFSP perspectives’, took place in Paris on 21 and 22 May 2001 (Antonio Missiroli). The aim of this seminar was to address issues which lie at the juncture between two policy processes that are still perceived, if not pursued, as separate and distinct, namely the enlargement of the European Union and the development of CFSP/ESDP. Such separation, or distinction, concerns especially the candidate countries, who still see the EU as a mainly economic organisation and its CFSP as a mainly declaratory policy, NATO remaining the main security provider on the continent. The discussion aimed precisely at filling this gap and focused on both the attitudes of current members and candidates vis-à-vis enlargement and CFSP/ESDP, and the possible interactions between the two enlargements. In fact, late next year, key decisions are expected on both fronts – at the North Atlantic Council in Prague and at the European Council in Copenhagen, respectively – and it proved interesting, during this seminar, to assess the state of affairs and the likely scenarios seen from the participants’ viewpoints.

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    02May 2001
    From St-Malo to Nice: European defence: core documents
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    In the two years between St-Malo and Nice, the character of the European Union changed. What was previously unthinkable ‘at Fifteen’ became an objective agreed by all member states: the inclusion in the Union’s legitimate competencies of a common security and defence policy, in other words its acquisition of strategic responsibility in post-Cold War crisis management.

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    01May 2001
    Coherence for security policy: debates - cases- assessments
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    This Occasional Paper stems from a series of meetings of an ISS Task Force on ‘The Coherence of CFSP’ held in Paris between October 2000 and April 2001. Task Forces are small groups of experts and officials from member States, international bodies and think tanks that convene periodically to discuss a given topic or policy area. They usually include a ‘core group’ of members and other participants that join in according to the specific focus of each meeting.

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    01May 2001
    A common European export policy for defence and dual-use items?
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    In Europe, arms and dual-use exports raise complex questions. They fall between two policy spheres that are organised in a distinctly contrasting manner. On the one hand, they are an intrinsic part of commercial policy that lies within the exclusive competence of the European Community (EC). On the other hand, they come under the aegis of security and defence policy, a jealously guarded area of responsibility of the EU member states.

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