Home / Press review / Archive / Magazine / Politics / US-Missile-Defence / Background

The Security Policy of the European Union

Due to the common foreign policy of the EU it is increasingly expected to play a leading role in world politics. What are the aims of the EUs' security policy? What do the Europeans think about it?

When the heads of state and government of the European Union celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome on 25 March 2007 under the German Presidency, the original Community of six member states will have more than quadrupled its number of members and expanded its policy fields to all areas of the everyday life of its more than 480 million inhabitants.

Integration, stabilisation and intervention qualify as the foundations of the EU security policy.
Photo: stock.xchng

One policy field, the security and defence policy of the European Union, has gained in importance and become more dynamic as a result of the dramatic changes in the international system since the end of the Cold War, which have become even more pronounced since the turn of the millennium. Despite being conceived like no other aspect of the original founding idea of a united Europe and being shaped by "a recourse to the past as an antithesis to the reality of the immediate post-war era"[1] , it nevertheless failed in its conventional design in the beginning. In recent years, the EU has made the most progress in the areas of foreign and security policy in the world's dramatically changing political environment. Based on the conclusions of the Cologne, Helsinki and Feira Summits[2], the European Union is committed to a comprehensive approach to security that – in light of recent international peacekeeping missions – puts civil and military aspects of crisis management in relation to each other according to the EU's approach to security which combines elements of all pillars. The EU has advanced this phase of its plan for implementing a common European Security and Defence Policy that combines ambitious, institutional and operative elements and enables the Union to take a limited amount of political responsibility for tasks ranging from conflict prevention to crisis management.

For years, the common EU foreign policy has met with great approval by the European public. Increasingly, people associate it with the EU's legitimacy in playing a leading role in world politics. The citizens of the European Union are even more receptive to issues of European security and defence policy, while public support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is dwindling (this drop is itself a new trend), particularly in traditionally pro-Atlantic countries such as Germany, Italy, and Poland. This development accompanies the Europeans' continuously plummeting desire for US leadership.[3] The public's approval goes hand in hand with the desire for more integration in the international political field of European security policy. In this respect, people are ahead of recent EU developments. However, despite their ambiguous endorsement of fostering democracy which coincides with the strategic priorities proposed at the EU-U.S. Summit in Vienna in June 2006, what EU citizens think of the contents of such a policy remains rather vague.[4]

The EU has rarely had realistic expectations for its foreign and security policies, especially regarding available capabilities, i.e., institutions, instruments and resources.[5] This was particularly true of the hopes raised by the Maastricht Treaty (1993) with regard to a common European foreign policy. They were brutally shattered in the four bloody wars for political power and ethnic dominance initiated by Serbia in the 1990s, in the EU's back yard. While the gap between expectations and capabilities may have been diminished at the end of the last decade, simply because demands decreased, the gap between hopes and reality seemed to widen once again in the light of the ambitious goal of establishing a common European Security and Defence Policy which was first defined in the joint British-French declaration of Saint-Malo on 4 December 1998[6] and adopted by the Cologne Summit declaration. Initial progress made thanks to institutional and operative innovations reached clear limits as a result of the disagreement between the "Big Three" – Germany and France on one side and Great Britain supported by the American policy of divide and conquer on the other – in the prelude to the current War in Iraq. At no point did the EU as a whole engage in the war as an independent international power. In some ways, the extent of the crisis was reminiscent of the political battles in connection with the disintegration of Yugoslavia when the leading European powers believed that their insisting on national sovereignty meant successful representation of their interests.

In accordance with the principle that crises are an important part of the European integration process and that new ambitions spring from failure and breakdown, the heads of state and government of the EU adopted a common security policy in December 2003 that states that the EU is "inevitably a global player" who "should be ready to share in the responsibility for global security and in building a better world"[7].

At the same time, the Convention on the Future of Europe took place. The expansion of the founding treaties has been a powerful instrument of the integration process since the Single European Act (1987). Neither the draft treaty adopted by the heads of state and government (which failed in the referendums in France and the Netherlands)[8] nor the complicated institutional pillar structure would have eliminated the political tensions inherent in a European Union with 25 member states. However, by abolishing the principle of the rotating presidency and introducing a European diplomatic service in addition to the office of an EU Foreign Minister combining the foreign policy functions of the Commission and the Council, the EU would have made an important institutional contribution to close the still existing gap between expectations and capabilities. This would also improve the EU's foreign and security policy actions with all the different diplomatic, security, defence, development and trade instruments.

1 . 2 . 3 . next »

Further articles on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » EU Policy, » Europe
More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » EU Policy, » Europe