KERAMITSOPOULOS, PolykleitosMA in European Studies, track European UnionStudent ID Number: 0135410

Address:Prins Hendrikkade 189/KR-401011 TD, Amsterdam, NL

First Supervisor: Dr. Otto HolmanSecond Supervisor: Dr. Menno SpieringGraduation Date: 31/08/2002Submission Date: 28/06/2002

Thesis Title:A Politically Strong European Union: More Balance of Powers in Global Governance?

Contents:

CHAPTER I – The History and Theory of European Political Cooperation

- Introduction- The Driving Forces of Political Cooperation in Europe- Theoretical Approaches to European Integration

CHAPTER II – The EU’s Adaptation and Evolution Following the End of the Cold War

- The Dynamics of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy

- The Developments of the CFSP in the 1990s:i. The Treaty of Maastrichtii. The Treaty of Amsterdamiii.The Treaty of Niceiv.The European Council in Laaken

- Conclusion: Is the European Union a ‘Political Dwarf’?

CHAPTER III – The European Union in the 21 st Century Global Order

- The USA vs. EU: A Case of Choosing Between the Lesser of Two Evils

- The Importance of the Europeanisation of the CFSP- Globalisation and the European Union

CHAPTER IV - Conclusion

CHAPTER IThe History and Theory of European Political Cooperation

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Introduction

Near the end of 2001, the world witnessed an unprecedented event: the USA was hit by terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. This was unprecedented because it was the first time – excluding the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, on 7/12/1941 – that the USA suffered such a blow within its own territory, and particularly against its capital city and the city of New York. What followed were the swift reactions of the USA, which hastened to name certain third countries as the ‘axis of evil’ that hosted and supported terrorism, and proceeded to demand the military cooperation of its NATO allies, although outside the NATO framework. This initiative indicated that the USA only recently became aware of a threat that has been omnipresent, namely terrorism, as it also indicated that they wish to preserve their superpower status at all cost, resorting to unilateral policies if need be the case. However, the Americans have neglected the other possible reasons that might have caused these attacks to occur, such as the negative results of neo-liberal practices within the globalisation framework that lead to the seclusion of large parts of the world’s population, and claimed that the attacks were the product of paranoid Islamic aspirations of destroying the Western World.

On the other side, the European Union entered the 21st century with the public circulation of the common currency, the Euro, among 12 of the 15 Member States, and it justifiably deserves the characterisation of an ‘economic giant’, being the largest single trading bloc in the world. However, the way in which the EU was dragged by the USA in the war on terrorism – or the war on terror, in Mr. Bush’s own words – illustrated the fact that the EU’s political will can easily be overshadowed by that of the US, giving credence to the term ‘political dwarf’ that is applied to the EU. This means that if the European Union does not move forward to political unification – through the supranationalisation of its Common Foreign and Security Policy – its political will shall continue to be muted by the presence of America, while at the same

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time there will be no counterweight to American global hegemony, which has taken on an arrogant way of operating.

So, on the one hand, there is the USA as a superpower that draw international legitimacy out of their military might, which provides them with the opportunity to take on a leading role in global affairs. Consequently, the USA have enough power to practice and enforce, on a global scale, whichever policies suit best their national interest. Furthermore, US policy lines have always been centred on Conservatism, and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of opposition – apart from political theorists – that could lead to a change of the American global perspective. On the other hand, the EU has been established as a global player of mostly economic power, which means that the EU’s global legitimacy derives from the various economic links it has established with the rest of the world. Contrary to the USA that prefer direct action without much delay in political affairs, Europeans have shown that they prefer a more rational approach to global issues, considering the options available, and if possible proceed to common action. Furthermore, the EU has a social dimension that stems from its Left wing legacy – although this legacy is now at a crisis – that is lacking in the USA. These few differences between the EU and the USA demonstrate that there is more future potential accredited to the EU of acting as a ‘progressive’ rather than an ‘aggressive’ player in the international scene.

This thesis builds on the assumption that the USA have outlived their role as global benefactors and have resorted to measures, both military and economic, that have created an unstable global environment with unprecedented consequences, most clearly illustrated by the attacks of September 11, 2001. A major prerequisite to move on to the creation of a more balanced and healthy global political and economic system is the political unification of the EU, because it is only through its political unification that it can attain the necessary political clout to counterweight the USA.

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The remaining part of this chapter examines firstly the forces that have driven political cooperation within the EU, and continues with theoretical interpretations of European Integration. As a general principle it is recognised that cooperation has occurred largely as a result of the initiatives of the three biggest EU Member States, France, Germany and Great Britain, but developments in this field have been more significant in the late 1980s and during the 1990s. This owes mainly to the fact that the global political and economic environment underwent radical changes during that period, especially following the end of the Cold War. Thenceforth, the EU found itself in a complex interdependency system that initiated theoretical debates on the nature of European Integration, which reflects the difficulty in determining exactly the kind of motivation that generates cooperation on a European level, especially as regards the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Therefore, the chapter will continue with a theoretical overview of European Integration in order to understand the inherent difficulties as regards foreign policy coordination, and in order to understand the different opinions regarding the general role for the EU. In other words, a theoretical overview of European Integration is necessary to understand that there is a lack of a common and clear goal behind the integration process.

The second chapter examines the actual developments that took place within the CFSP framework during the 1990s, with a view to providing an answer as to whether the EU deserves the term ‘political dwarf’. In general, the evolution of the CFSP through the 1990s reflects the EU’s attempts to adapt to an environment that hosted more and new security threats, different in magnitude from the threat of Communist invasion. As a result, the EU has gradually set up many of the necessary institutional instruments that will enable it in the future to take on a more active role in world affairs, as these instruments will give it the opportunity to finally ‘speak with one voice’. In this respect, it is argued that the EU is not a political dwarf, but rather a political actor with an international impact, in its early stages of development.

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The third chapter examines the EU’s position in the global order with respect to the position of the United States of America. This section constitutes the fundamental part of the thesis and assumes that the USA have adopted an arrogant superpower behaviour, imposing political and economic order with the aid of their military might, and this can only be controlled or counterbalanced by a politically strong European Union. Consequently, it is recognised that the Europeanisation of EU foreign policy is a major prerequisite for the future role that the EU has to play. Furthermore, the chapter examines the differences between the EU and the USA as regards their perspectives on foreign policy; it demonstrates that the EU is recognised internationally by its economic status, which it has developed through its Common Commercial Policy and not its military strength – which it substantially lacks in comparison with the USA – and that it is based on traditional Social Democratic values that, if adapted efficiently to the demands of the 21st century, will guarantee a more progressive and less aggressive European superpower.

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The Driving Forces of Political Cooperation in Europe

Cooperation on foreign and security policy within the EU has been a sensitive and often contentious issue. Omitting for the moment the numerous factors that influence foreign policy at the national level, integration in the area of foreign policy within the EU has been generally dependent on two factors in particular: 1) the relationship of the EC/EU with NATO and consequently with the United States of America, and 2) the internal disagreement between Member States about the general scope of the integration process itself.

Foreign policy coordination includes the transfer of a substantial aspect of national sovereignty – foreign affairs – to the Community, and traditionally, closer cooperation in this field has always had connotations about political unification. Therefore, there is a difference of perspective among those Member States who have been primarily interested in the economic dimension of European Integration, as well as those who are concerned about the loss of sovereignty as such, and the Member States who wish to push integration towards the creation of some kind of a federal state. In parallel, the ongoing debate about the future development of the EU reveals that progress is slow in this field and also that indeed there are conflicting views about the general relationships with the USA, and particularly what kind of influence it should exert on European foreign policy coordination. This means that the dividing lines on foreign policy in the EU have been different and more persistent than those in other policy areas; for instance, judging from the fact that the Euro, as a concrete representation of the Internal Market, is

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already a reality, it is obvious that the convergence of certain aspects of national economic policies has been much easier than in foreign policy matters.

In general, integration within the EU has always been prompted by one or more of the three biggest and more powerful Member States. The same applies to integration as regards foreign policy. France has often provided the impetus for cooperation in this field, but it has received less support in this area from Germany. France has always been opposed to the hegemonic power of the USA, and wished to see the creation of an independent EU, whereas Germany had close ties with America, especially in security and defence1. The other powerful member, Great Britain, has always been supportive of American and NATO military initiatives, a result of the traditional special relationship that (still?) ties the two countries together. Consequently, Britain has been sceptical about the development of a security and defence role for the EU. Furthermore, Britain has always expressed reservations regarding the creation of an EU with a tight political structure. It is indicative of this that Britain has agreed to the development of a European foreign policy on the condition that this policy will be formulated without interference from the European Commission and the European Parliament, which are the most supranational institutions within the Union2.

Despite the fact that the development of a European foreign policy has only recently begun to be fruitful, similar attempts to give the Community a firm political standing in international affairs had also been carried out in the past. An early attempt to establish a European Defence Community (EDC) – known also as the Pleven Plan – in the 1950s was initiated by France, but was also rejected by the French parliament in 19543. As an alternative, the EDC was transformed into the Western European Union (WEU), whose main purpose was to control the rearmament of Germany. However, the WEU didn’t 1 Rummel, Reinhard, Germany’s Role in the CFSP: “Normalitet” or “Sonderweg”?, in Christopher Hill (ed.), Redefining European Security, London and New York, Garland Publishing Company, 1996, pp.40-672 Sjursen, Helene, The Common Foreign and Security Policy: An Emerging New Voice in International Politics? , ARENA Working Papers, 12/12/1999 (http://arena.uio.no/publications/wp99_34.htm) 3 Urwin, Derek, A Political History of Western Europe Since 1945, Fifth Edition, Longman, London and New York, 1998, pp. 94-95

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produce any significant results, and its strategic planning had been rendered irrelevant by the development of nuclear power by the Soviet Union. Consequently, NATO, heavily based on American technology, was the most efficient organisation to deal with collective security.

Until the early 1970s, Europe had focused more on adjusting its economy to the structures of a loose confederation of states that it was; since it was principally conceived as a customs union between signatory countries, Europe completed its customs union in 1968. In the meantime, France had proposed in 1961, the creation of a Political Community, with the presentation of the Fouchet Plan, which collapsed the following year4. Apparently, the intra-national constraints were such that did not welcome attempts to strengthen the Community politically. However, the fact that General Charles DeGaulle was presiding over France during that period, and as a result of his insistence on the protection of French national sovereignty, it didn’t seem likely that political cooperation would succeed.

Following DeGaulle’s resignation in April 1969, the heads of state and government of the EC decided to re-launch European Integration at the Hague Summit of December 1969. The 1970s were characterised by an overall optimism about the future of Europe, and therefore, in 1972, European Political Cooperation (EPC) was established. EPC referred to the procedures that allowed Member States of the EC to discuss and coordinate their positions on foreign affairs and act in common, when and where appropriate5. EPC became important in the Helsinki Process, which was launched in 1975 and included 35 countries that participated in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which has held in Helsinki. The Final Act that was signed laid the legal basis for the CSCE system of cooperation6. After the Helsinki Process, certain signs of foreign policy coordination did appear, with the EC acquiring common positions on the Middle East, as regarded the Oil Crisis of 1972-19737. However, until the 4 Dinan, Desmond, An Ever Closer Union?, Second Edition, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1999, p.385 Bainbridge Timothy, Penguin Companion to the European Union, Penguin Books, 1998, p.2446 Bainbridge, 1998, p.2987 Sjursen, 1999

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mid-1980s, such developments took place outside the framework of the treaties, meaning that they were not incorporated in official documents. It was with the Single European Act (SEA), under the Commission Presidency of Jacques Delors, that EPC was formally included in the treaty and given official written status for the first time8. Throughout its development, and following its official establishment in the SEA, the EPC developed within an international framework where collective security, as has been pointed out, was provided for by NATO, which was the constant counterpart of the Soviet Union in the Cold War years, until the latter’s collapse in 1991. This was an indication that at least until 1989, when the Cold War came to an end, Europe, despite its efforts to coordinate its foreign policy, had limited potential of becoming an important international actor.

With the end of the Cold War, a wide range of new security issues surfaced in Europe, since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact created countries that were potential partners both in the EU and NATO, and the risk of military invasion was not so relevant anymore9. The general argument that was most often used to describe the sequence that events should follow after the end of the Cold War was the ‘peace dividend’10; it expressed the belief that if defence burden was reduced through arms control and disarmament, then governments could use the money spent previously on security, in other policy areas11. This was also due to the fact that Europe was not facing the intense threat of military invasion from the East, because of the collapse of the Soviet Union12, but instead it was often argued that economic and social imbalances, environmental problems and humanitarian disasters were as important, or even more important security risks than the threat of military invasion13.

8 Rees, G. Wyn, Common Foreign and Security Policy and defence: a lost opportunity?, in Lynch, P., Neuwahl, N. and Rees, G. W., Reforming the European Union – From Maastricht to Amsterdam, Longman 2000, Pearson Education Limited, 2000, pp. 162-1769 Sjursen, 199910 Urwin, 1998, p.30411 Idem.12 Sjursen, 199913 Sjursen, Helene, New Forms of Security Policy in Europe, ARENA Working Papers, 2001 (http://arena.uio.no/publications/wp01_4.htm)

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Nevertheless, the notion of the ‘peace dividend’ soon evaporated and the idea that the Council on Security and Cooperation in Europe could provide a security structure was almost abandoned. However, the CSCE declared officially the end of the division of Europe, and agreed to develop means to settle disputes in a peaceful manner. In the end, the CSCE – renamed OSCE, Organisation on Security and Cooperation in Europe – proved to have significant limits to its capacities14.

The issue of the re-establishment of security in Eastern Europe, and Europe in general, was not a new one, at least not for Germany. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it seemed that Ostpolitik had become an inevitable reality, although there were several opponents to German reunification, even within Germany. The possibility of reunification raised concern also among other European countries, most notably France, about a potential alleingang of a strong German federation in Central Europe15. Therefore, while it seemed that NATO as a military alliance would dissolve, because it had lost its original purpose, its scope was again re-launched as an instrument that would guarantee the maintenance of peace, and among others, would keep re-united Germany within its structures, eliminating the fears of it becoming once again a threat to Europe. As a consequence, NATO was preserved ‘on the assumption of an uncertain world’16; NATO had already demonstrated its capabilities in the 1991 Gulf War, and the outbreak of conflict in Yugoslavia in the same year was the first real demonstration of the lack of a credible alternative, other than the military structures of NATO17, a point emphasised by the desire expressed on the part of the governments of Eastern Europe to eventually acquire NATO membership. In 1991, NATO accepted the creation of a Franco-German Rapid Reaction Corps with headquarters in Strasbourg, which would deal with intervention in localised disputes outside the traditional NATO area18.

14 Urwin, 1998, pp. 304-515 Idem, pp. 305-616 Idem, p.30617 Idem, pp. 307-818 Foreign Policy Research Institute, Europe’s Rapid Reaction Force: What, Why and How?, Volume 2, Number 2, February 2001 (www.fpri.org)

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The fact that NATO’s role was being redefined did not mean that Member States of the EC were not considering security issues on their own. The EC wanted to develop a common defence and security policy through using the WEU, which France explicitly supported, with a view to creating an EC independent of America19. In this respect, the Maastricht Treaty – which was ratified in late 1993 – was a turning point for the Community per se as well as the development of its foreign policy, since it reflected the need for the EC to obtain the status of an actor with an international impact.

The Maastricht Treaty replaced the EPC, which had proven to be a very modest development in European foreign policy, with the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It went much further than the SEA in this field, and transformed foreign policy coordination into a legal obligation20. The European Community was renamed into European Union, and the need to develop a common security and defence policy and perhaps a common defence was expressed. In this framework, the WEU was considered as the ‘defence arm’ of the EU21 and its role was redefined; it started to strengthen its own institutions and to develop military capabilities. However, to the irritation of the French, WEU had a rather Atlantic focus, mainly because of the influence of Britain22. Subsequently, in 1992, in a meeting in Petersburg in Germany, the role and scope of the WEU was expanded to include humanitarian and rescue efforts, peacekeeping, and crisis management, involving the deployment of combat forces, under the label of ‘Petersburg Tasks’23.

The 1990s were dominated by intense discussion about ‘alternative security architectures’ in Europe, which I perceive as architectures that aimed to define a use for military intelligence (including diplomatic and peacekeeping corps, as well as applying military technology for the tracking down of various

19 Urwin, Derek, p.30920 Rees, G. Wyn, Common Foreign and Security Policy and defence: a lost opportunity?, in Lynch, P., Neuwahl, N. and Rees, G. W., Reforming the European Union – From Maastricht to Amsterdam, Longman 2000, Pearson Education Limited, 2000, pp. 162-17621 Art. J4, TEU, from www.europa.eu.int, the European Union’s official website.22 Foreign Policy Research Institute, February 2001, www.fpri.org 23 Petesburg Declaration, West European Union Council of Ministers, Bonn, June 1992

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forms of crime), wherever and whenever necessary, in order to prevent conflict in the long term. However, it became evident that even though the security challenges to Europe had changed, the actors’ preferences for solutions were still influenced by some of the same factors as during the Cold War. These were the view on the United States’ role in Europe and the view of the purpose and future development of the EU as an organisation. Behind the formulations in the Maastricht Treaty, there were still divergent views, not only about how to develop a European security policy, but whether or not the EU should have such a policy at all – that is if the CFSP would constitute an expression of the European Union. The Maastricht Treaty also stressed that the development of a common European security policy should not in any way prejudice or challenge Atlantic security co-operation.

Expectations about the disintegration of NATO after the ‘loss’ of its communist enemy did not come true. In fact NATO, turned out to be far more efficient in redefining its role and its organisational structure after the Cold War than the EU. From being a traditional military alliance whose purpose was to protect the territory of its member states against an external threat, NATO developed a more flexible strategy, which amongst other things would allow it to conduct peacekeeping operations outside NATO territory24. The continued relevance of NATO to European security was strengthened at the NATO summit in Berlin in June 1996, where it was decided that a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) should be developed inside the framework of NATO25. This decision was interpreted as a victory for the ‘Atlanticists’ in the struggle over the development of security structures in Europe26. Any European use of NATO forces was dependent on recognition from the Atlantic Council, irrespective of whether or not the United States would take part in the operation27. Hence, it looked as if the WEU would be foremost connected to NATO rather than become the defence arm of the EU. The Berlin agreement was to a large extent made possible by France’s

24 These, Noam Chomsky cynically summarises in his term: ‘New Military Humanism’, in his book entitled The New Military Humanism – Lessons From Kosovo, Pluto Press, 199925 Sjursen, 199926 For more on the development of the EU-US-NATO relationships see Cornish, Paul, Partnesrhip in Crisis? The US, Europe and the Rise and Fall of NATO, Cassell Publishing, 199727 Sjursen, 1999

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decision to move closer to the military co-operation within NATO28. This was interpreted as a signal that France had abandoned its ambitions about developing a European security policy with the EU at the core, and chosen instead to expand the European security identity inside NATO29.

The struggle over the development of European foreign policy was furthermore influenced by external political events, most notably the Bosnian crisis and the question of the enlargement of both the EU and NATO to Central and Eastern Europe. As it turned out, the EU gave a disappointing performance in dealing with both issues, as its diplomatic efforts in Bosnia bore no fruit, and the EU itself appeared hesitant towards its eastward enlargement. On the other hand, NATO decisively provided a solution to the conflict and furthermore embarked on a programme of enlargement towards the East and even towards the successor states to the Soviet Union, and also Turkey30. In any case, given the military superiority of the USA and their leading role within NATO, it seemed that NATO was the only organisation properly equipped to tackle the new security challenges that Europe was faced with after the end of the Cold War.

However, until mid-1997, one of the most important elements in European politics was that Britain, one of the biggest states within the EU, had been under the Conservative governments of Mrs Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, followed by Mr. John Major in the 1990s, something that introduced a substantial amount of scepticism about the role of an independent EU. However, in the spring of 1997, Britain elected for the first time after some 20 years, a social democratic government, Mr. Tony Blair’s Labour Party. Under these circumstances, it seemed that Britain was more willing to move more to the core of developments in the European Union. The new government in Britain dropped its conservative predecessor’s objections to making the WEU an appendage of the French-dominated Common Foreign

28 France pulled out of the military dimension of NATO in 1966 but remained part of the political dimension of the Alliance.29 Foreign Policy Research Institute, www.fpri.org 30 Urwin, 1998, pp. 307-9

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and Security Policy, and the new Anglo-French ‘partnership’ was codified a year later in St. Malo with an agreement signed on December 5, 199831.

With this agreement, work on strengthening the EU’s security and defence capacity was rejuvenated. The changes in the British position were partly a result of Tony Blair’s desire to lead an active European policy, partly a result of increasing British frustrations with the USA, which were triggered by discussions on Western policies in former Yugoslavia. The British government was particularly disappointed with what it considered to be American sabotage of the Vance-Owen plan for Bosnia32. It was obvious that Mr. Blair wanted to boost his country’s status within the EU by giving it an active role in foreign policy, especially since Britain had reserved an opt-out from the Economic and Monetary Union, upon the insistence of John Major. In this area the Franco-German axis is weaker and France does in many ways have more in common with Britain than with Germany on foreign and security policy, partly because both France and Great Britain are nuclear powers.

What is perhaps most striking about the developments in EPC/CFSP in the 1990s are the extreme shifts in the assessment of its future prospects. The optimism with regard to the strengthening of the CFSP in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, which was replaced by pessimism after the Amsterdam Treaty, had returned after the St. Malo declaration33. As a result, Member-States met once again in Cologne (June 1999) and in Helsinki (December 1999), where the role of the 1993 Franco-German project of Eurocorps was redefined, with a view to transforming it into some sort of European Military Force. The guiding principles of the EU summit in Cologne called for the creation of an EU capacity for autonomous action backed up by credible military capabilities and appropriate decision-making bodies. The focus of the debate has to date been on the development of these military capabilities. The European Union has been preparing itself for a military role

31 Foreign Policy Research Institute32 Sjursen, 199933 Sjursen, 1999

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for some time now, adopting an ever closer relationship with the Western European Union (WEU), Europe’s security organisation34.

Great Britain suggested a ‘headline goal’, in order to reorganize the European crisis reaction forces into a corps, which, by 2003, could begin crisis operations within 60 days35. The Eurocorps was also under the consideration of being developed into a European Rapid Reaction Force. This Force, to be restructured over four years, foresees the establishment of a European army with 50.000 to 60.000 soldiers, that can be mobilised within 60 days and be operational in a crisis region for at least one year.36 The result of the summits in Cologne and Helsinki was that in December 2000, the European Council of Nice would meet to set a timetable for the creation of a European Rapid Reaction Force. However, Member States met in Nice with a substantial amount of differences between them, especially on the nature and scope of this European force, its relationship with NATO as well as its relationship with third countries that are still candidate members for the EU, including Turkey.

The picture of the first eight months of 2001 that was projected through the British Press, seemed quite disturbed; there were tensions with the USA, a referendum rejection in Ireland, and anti-globalisation riots that left one person dead and parts of two European cities in ruins. Following this, Europe tried to cope with the impact of September 11th on security measures, in a political, economical and diplomatic way.

Politically, things seemed to be relevantly upset; Ireland had rejected the Nice Treaty in its referendum, raising the possibility that the agreement may be impossible to ratify, which, combined with the street protests, prompted further discussions about the future of the EU. There were also important political changes in Italy, which brought a discordant voice to the European negotiating table in the form of the new premier, centre-right businessman Silvio Berlusconi. The 11 September changed the tone but also shaped the

34 Mosher, Peter, The Challenges of Enlargement: The Austrian Perspective, 9/12/1999 (www.ucis.pitt.edu/cwes/EUC/EUC_Visitors/moser/moser.html) 35 Moussis, Nikos, Access to the European Union, Papazisis Publications, Athens, 2001 36 Cross, Peter and Nassauer, Ottfried, European Security – Sharks and Minnows Off Helsinki, Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic Security, 2/12/1999

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agenda for the remainder of the year. Tension with America was replaced by an impressive new mood of solidarity37. Europe rushed through unprecedented legislation on judicial cooperation, putting in place plans for an EU-wide arrest warrant which would apply not just to terrorist offences but to more than 30 other serious crimes38.

Furthermore, in contrast to the Gulf War, when European governments took different positions, this time all 15 agreed on strong support for the USA. The EU named 10 countries as possible new entrants – laying the ground for enlargement as early as 2004. It started a new review of its functions that will help a new round of reforms, leading to a clarification of the EU’s powers, and possibly to a European constitution39. However, there still remains the question of whether Turkey, as a third country candidate member to the EU, will have a say in the EU’s foreign affairs, particularly as regards the functioning of the European Army, contrary to the aspirations of the Greek government40. Despite the diplomatic problems with Greece in handling this situation, a rapid reaction force has been declared operational.

What becomes clear from examining European Integration is that it is a very complicated process, largely susceptible even to the most seemingly insignificant political development. Given the weight of the political history of each Member State that plays a significant role in the integration process, and the powerful personalities of European leaders, combined with their knowledge of political and diplomatic affairs, it becomes even clearer that cooperation in foreign policy at the European level is not an easy task. Political leaders have to take into account a substantial number of parameters before advancing into action, and even more so before agreeing on common positions.

It is obvious that claims around the political weakness of the European Union that want it to appear on the global scene as a ‘political dwarf’, are largely

37 Stephen Castle, Europe: At last, the EU has something tangible to show its people, 28/12/2001, Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.38 To Vima (in Greek), 7/1/200239 Stephen Castle, 28/12/2001 40 My emphasis.

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exaggerations that do not take into account the pressing global political climate that dictates states’ political responses. Admittedly, the 1990s have been an upset decade with sequel-wars in the Balkans and the Middle East. In this respect, the recent developments in the European foreign policy field have not been all too insignificant; on the contrary, it could be argued that they are signs of important steps taken towards the development of an international political actor, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter, when the actual developments in the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU throughout the 1990s will be looked at. What is more fundamental is that before one can proceed to label the EU a ‘political dwarf’, one has to first examine the theory behind European Integration, which is essential in order to comprehend the statesmen’s and theorists’ perceptions of a ‘European Final Goal’, behind the workings of European Integration.

Theoretical Approaches to European Integration

The process of European integration is by its very nature a complicated one, and as such it has caused disagreement among academics not only about the reasons that allow integration to occur, but also about the general future scope of the European Union. As a result there is no one single integration theory that can be applied wholly to the EU, but various, often contradicting ones.

Because the EU is an organisation that is constituted by individual national governments, whose duty is in any case to protect the national interest of their respective country, it would be logical – though not accurate – to consider integration from an ‘interest-driven’ perspective. This reasoning has been developed by Intergovernmental Institutionalism. It supports that the world is composed of sovereign states that are considered as unitary actors. In the framework of European Integration, these unitary actors – the Member States – are only linked to the European Union through the Council of

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Ministers41. Intergovernmental Institutionalism is based on three principles: 1) Intergovernmentalism, which supports that policy-making at EU level is simply a reflection of domestic policy-making, since it is assumed that every Member State perceives the EU through its own policy preferences; 2) Lowest-Common Denominator Bargaining, because integration largely depends on the bargaining that takes place within the EU between the three largest states of the Union. As a result, the outcome of these bargains reflects the relative power positions of the Member States; 3) Protection of Sovereignty, which is a constant underlying notion in Intergovernmental Institutionalism. Therefore, according to this ‘interest-driven’ approach to European integration, it seems that the state remains the principal actor in the international system.42

However, this perspective cannot account for the reasons that cooperation occurs sometimes beyond the interest of the state, nor for the occasional successes of supranational institutions, as well as – more specifically – the very existence of the CFSP. It does not account for the more complex relations of the EU with the individual Member States. Consequently, it doesn’t explain how the CFSP has proven to be so durable. It becomes difficult from this perspective to understand the criticisms that emerged towards Germany after its decision to unilaterally recognise Croatia as a sovereign state. If one expects that the CFSP will not create any ties on member states and that states at all times will act according to their own interest, this kind of action should neither be perceived as surprising nor unacceptable, but rather as a legitimate and logical action.

The inaccuracy of this approach on European Integration led other academics to shift the debate around whether the nation-state is overcome, as had been earlier supported (by Ernst Haas in 1964), or strengthened (Alan Milward in 1992, Andrew Moravcsik in 1994) by the European Union. This represents the classic contradiction in the perception of the European Union as a potential

41 Jachtenfuchs, Markus, Democracy and Governance in the European Union, European Integration Online Papers (EioP), Vol.1, No.2, 1997 (http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1997-002a.htm) 42 Moravcsik, Andrew, Negotiating the Single European Act, in Brent F. Nelsen and Alexander C-G. Stubb, The European Union – Readings on the Theory and Practice of European Integration , Second Edition, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998, pp.223-4

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federal state by those who believe that the EU institutions have overcome the nation-state in power on the one hand, and the perception of the EU as an international organisation by those who believe the nation-state to have been strengthened by the EU. Therefore, the political debate around the pattern that integration in Europe follows has been taken over by two opposing sides, Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Neo-functionalism. These two theories have created a platform for understanding the EU as an organisation where ‘political discourse and actual European policy making are usually perceived as a dramatic fight between [the EU and the individual Member States] in which the respective players more or less succeed to push the reality of European integration [into the reality either of a federal state or of an international organisation]’43.

Liberal Intergovernmentalism is perhaps the most influential theory on European Integration. As the name suggests, emphasis is put on the significance of the nation-state within the EU, because, above all, states are actors who wish to protect their national interest and serve their people. However, cooperation between governments on the European level is not of course excluded, but it is considered to be a result of rational political behaviour, which is largely dependent on a state’s economic interest. From this point of view, liberal intergovernmentalism has borrowed from the intergovernmental institutionalist paradigm that states act above all in order to maximise their gains, but it also recognises that the relationship of the EU with its members is more complex. The founding father of liberal intergovernmentalism, Andrew Moravcsik, stated that international cooperation is firstly a result of important domestic actors who influence states’ foreign policy decision-making and secondly a result of international bargaining processes.

Hooghe and Marks, who examine integration as a struggle between two conflicting economic projects, view integration from this perspective as an attempt on the part of the EU to protect its markets from political interference by combining European-wide market integration with the

43 Jachtenfuchs, 1997

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fragmentation of authority among multiple national governments. According to Hooghe and Marks, what they label as the ‘neo-liberal’ project, rejects supranational institutions as being capable of regulating the market system, but it seeks to generate competition among national governments in providing regulatory climates that mobile factors of production find attractive.44

Such an interpretation for integration on the European level is strong enough to account for both the success of intergovernmental cooperation, since it does not exclude cooperation, and for its failure, since it considers states to be actors that above all have an obligation to protect their national interest. However, this interpretation denies the sui generis nature of the European Union45, with the possibility of a political, geographical and functional spillover. This argument is supported by the opposing integration theory to liberal intergovernmentalism, namely Neo-functionalism.

Neo-functionalism recognises the same conditions of a complex interdependency system described by Liberal Intergovernmentalism, but instead, it attributes cooperation to political reasons rather than economic ones. It conceptualises the whole integration process as a procedure of gradual Europeanisation of national policies46 where European statesmen set their political agenda with a view to Europeanisation, irrespective of the implications on national governments’ policies. Whereas liberal intergovernmentalism claims supranational institutions to be redundant, neo-functionalism believes that it is these institutions that drive cooperation on the European level.

Central to neo-functionalist theory is the so-called ‘spillover’ effect, which accounts for the way in which decision- and policy-making at the European level affect national political actors, neighbouring countries and the structure of the European Union itself. Neo-functionalists believe that as integration is

44 Hooghe, Liesbet and Marks, Gary, The Making of a Polity: The Struggle Over European Integration, European Integration Online Papers (EioP), Vol.1, No.4, 1997 (http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1997-004a.htm) 45 Jachtenfuchs, 199746 Ladrech, Robert, Europeanisation of Domestinc Politics and Institutions: The Case of France, in: Journal of Common Market Studies 1, 1994, pp.69-88

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advancing to more complex forms, it makes no sense for social and political domestic actors to lobby at the national level, since the European Union is increasingly becoming a more frequent point of reference in national policy formation47. The spillover effect also has a geographical dimension that supports that as states further integrate, it is only a matter of time for states outside European integration to join the process. The final dimension of the spillover effect is functional spillover; this claims that once change occurs in one or two policy areas because of integration at the European level, change has to occur in other policy areas, to ensure policy continuation and coherence within the EU.

Hooghe and Marks spoke on similar lines when describing the project for regulated capitalism. Neo-functionalism accords much relevance and importance to the institutions as political actors, and the project for regulated capitalism as described by Hooghe and Marks is one that introduces a variety of market-enhancing and -supporting legislation to create a social democratic dimension to European Governance. The introduction of such legislation can only materialise after a proposal from the Commission has been posted. The project attempts to deepen the EU and increase its capacity for regulation by upgrading the European Parliament, promoting mobilisation of particular social groups and reforming institutions to make legislation easier, by introducing for example the principle of Qualified Majority Voting in the Council of Ministers.

In general, neo-functionalism captures a lot of the political impetus to move forward with European Integration, and its application is apparent in explaining the EU’s eastward enlargement, the adoption of the Euro as part and consequence of the Internal Market, the creation of a multi-speed European Union, and perhaps every transfer of competences to the EU. On the other hand, neo-functionalism is not accurate enough to account for occasional failures of the integration process, such as the non-compliance of Member States to various Community directives ranging from the least significant economic measures to the CFSP.

47 Ladrech, 1994

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Until now, none of these two theoretical models of European integration has proven to be complete. There are deadlocks to be found in both of them. However, there have been attempts to define a middle ground between them, which view the EU as a dynamic multi-level system that undergoes ‘permanent institutional change and that includes the Member States in an encompassing system while simultaneously, national political, economic and legal systems continue to exist’48. However, looking at the EU as a multi-level system is more a way in which to look at reality rather than a developed theoretical model, but at the same time it provides a forum that acknowledges the EU as a sui generis political system and it allows it to be compared to other seemingly different political systems and their solutions to problems of governance49.

One such theoretical approach to European Integration is Historical Institutionalism, supported by Paul Pierson, a view that combines Neo-functionalist as well as Intergovernmentalist theory50. The main assumption is that EU institutions and policies may be a result of intergovernmental bargaining, but through time they evolve in different-than-anticipated patterns. Spillover and gaps in the Member States’ control of power emerge, giving supranational institutions more responsibility. Pierson builds on the fact that Neo-functionalism doesn’t explain whether supranational institutions are simply agents that monitor developments and implement policies, or autonomous institutions that create genuine gaps in Member State control51. What he has observed is that politicians are more concerned about the short-term effects of decisions they take, rather than about the long-term effects. This is based on the reasoning of electoral politics, where decisions that will have long-term consequences on governance occur only when these consequences become politically salient, or when they don’t hinder short-term electoral retribution52. Through this behaviour of political actors, the

48 Jachtenfuchs, 199749 Idem.50 Pierson, Paul, The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis, in Brent F. Nelsen and Alexander C-G. Stubb, The European Union – Readings on the Theory and Practice of European Integration , Second Edition, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998, pp. 295-32151 Idem, pp. 306-752 Idem, p. 308

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endurance of supranational institutions is not taken into account. Since policy-making that is based on short-term expectations is handed over to the institutions, policies are bound to undergo certain development or may even change through time. Therefore, in reality, they will have a long-term effect, that will create unanticipated consequences for the Member States. As a result, the European Union, tends to become increasingly a point of reference in domestic policy-making, attesting to certain political advantage for the institutions53.

In conclusion, it seems obvious that the European Union goes beyond explicit definition as an organisation, and also that the actual integration process relies not only on idealistic aspirations about the future of Europe, nor only on rational choices of individual states. Integration in the EU is apparently the result of a constant combination of a multitude of factors (national political orientations, domestic affairs, etc.) that affect national policies, and the administrational needs of the European Union itself (the strengthening of the European Parliament, the need to forge a working system of CFSP, and so froth). Furthermore, as regards the CFSP, it is of fundamental importance because it entails the Member States’ national interest and requires an effective coordination of national foreign policies. However, in turn, national foreign policies are affected by a number of other factors, which include external and domestic affairs alike, and the unpredictability rate of the development of such issues is rather high. Given this fact, and also that the European Union is an organisation that has the goal to effectively adapt to a rapidly changing global environment, it is clear that the only sufficient way of looking at the process of integration of the European Union is exactly by making observations on real outcomes, rather than providing theoretical frameworks for understanding it54.

53 My conclusion.54 However, one very interesting theoretical approach labelled Democratic Experimentalism presents an alternative way of looking at governance in the European Union. For more, see Burkard Eberlein and Dieter Kerwer, Theorising The New Modes Of European Union Governance, European Integration Online Papers (EIoP), Vol. 6, No. 5, 16/4/2002, at http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2002-005a.htm

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CHAPTER IIThe EU’s Adaptation and Evolution Following the End of the

Cold War

The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that in reality the European Union is not as politically weak as some critics claim. First of all, the political background under which developments in the EU’s foreign policy area took place has been very important in setting agendas for the EU, and secondly the actual developments of CFSP as laid out in the treaties do not indicate that the Union is – at least in theory – politically weak. In order to provide an answer to the chapter’s fundamental problematic it is necessary first to look at the driving forces that led European Union Member States to gradually enhance their cooperation on foreign policy with a view to creating a European Defence Identity. In this chapter I will firstly present the causes of the various ‘new’ security issues that appeared for the European Union during the course of the 1990s that affected developments in Common Foreign and Security Policy. Following this more general approach I will

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present the actual developments in CFSP that have been contextualised in the treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and the European Council in Laaken. In concluding I will try to analyse whether claims on the European Union’s political weakness are valid.

The Dynamics of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy

The end of the Cold War and seemingly the most militarily secure European security environment in the 20th century found intergovernmental organization bureaucrats and member states unprepared for such an event. There were some who simply expected NATO, a collective defence organization, to disintegrate, as would be the case with its Eastern counterpart, the Warsaw Treaty Organization. But most agreed that not all of NATO’s roles had ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the often-recited aphorism, NATO was initially conceived as aiming to keep Russia out of Europe, the U.S. in Europe and Germany down55.

In the case of the EU, the collapse of the Berlin Wall – as a powerful indicator of the end of the Cold War – has been portrayed as giving the Community the chance, after having been overshadowed by the superpowers for the past 40 years, to fulfil its ‘destiny’ as the leader of Europe. The rejuvenation of the EU, including its joint pursuit of a closer confederation containing a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), is often credited to Commission President Jacques Delors.

The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo throughout the 1990s both initiated and considerably influenced the way in which European security would evolve in the 21st century. Initially, the European Union responded to the Yugoslav crisis with great hopes and enthusiasm, but the situation became worse. The crisis quickly turned into a sensitive issue with each group assigning responsibilities to the other until ultimately the UN and NATO took the leading 55 Perlmutter, Amos, The Corruption of NATO: The Alliance Moves East, in NATO Enters the 21st Century, Frank Cass Publishers, London, 2001, p.128

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role56. The newly set up procedures for security decision-making in the EU seemed to have failed. They had proven better at accommodating the members and their state interests than at making the sort of quick foreign-policy decisions that are needed during a crisis. The immediate reaction of many at the time, was simply that a hegemon or at least a central authority was needed in order to achieve foreign policy cooperation rather than ‘ad hocery’57.

The EU’s first approach to the Yugoslav crisis was diplomatic. It reacted to the Croatian and Slovenian independence by sending diplomats to Belgrade to avoid a crisis and threatening the suspension of aid if there were no immediate ceasefire. Jacques Poor, Luxembourg's foreign minister declared: It is the hour of Europe, not of the Americans58. At first, the threat of suspending aid appeared to bring results, but when conflict broke out, EU members disagreed on how to respond, as they couldn’t agree on a mandate for the WEU to act. The EU admitted that it could do no more in Yugoslavia and asked the UN to name a special envoy. However, Member States of the EU did agree to impose sanctions on what remained of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and to eventually recognize Croatia and Slovenia, providing they met a number of conditions.

The Kosovo consequences for European security were almost as significant as had been those from the Bosnian war. Events in Kosovo had again highlighted the European Union’s diplomatic and military weaknesses. There were those who believed that, had the EU been militarily stronger and more united when Yugoslavia broke up in 1991, ‘Europe might have been spared the successive wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s frustration with the EU’s inability to play an active role in Kosovo’s diplomacy prompted him to work for an EU defence capability’59. While there were other important factors that facilitated the European

56 Anderson, Stephanie, EU, NATO and CSCE Responses to the Yugoslav Crisis: Testing Europe’s New Security Architecture, European Security 4, Summer 1995, pp. 329 – 330 57 Anderson, 1995, p.32858 Quoted in Anderson, p.34059 Grant, Charles, European Defense Post-Kosovo, Centre for European Reform Working Paper, London, June 1999, p.2

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Union’s first real impetus to become a vital member of the evolving European security architecture – such as the perceived increased likelihood that the EU would want to intervene in its own backyard, the decline in Russian power, making such interventions more feasible, and the more relaxed attitude of the Clinton (as contrasted to the Bush Senior) administration relating to a European security arm60 - NATO’s victory against the Serbs was particularly important. It was important for a number of quite specific reasons:

1) The Europeans had succeeded in maintaining a common front throughout the operations, despite certain inevitable disagreements.

2) The war highlighted European military dependence upon the USA61.3) Europeans, contrary to their experience during the Bosnian war,

seemed to play a quite credible diplomatic role, but,4) Great Britain and France were concerned that ‘NATO’s capability gap

had been aggravated by the complex and inept decision making for European crisis management.

The war in Kosovo became a turning point in the European understanding of what the EU/WEU should be able to do in the complex fields of crisis prevention, crisis management, peacekeeping and war fighting. From the outset of the war, Washington had determined the tone and substance of the international community’s response; during the war the USA literally was responsible for most of the initiatives. The Europeans had clearly come to ‘recognize that most Americans were not willing to risk their lives in messy European conflicts in which their national interests are hardly at stake ’62. British Defence Minister George Robertson was especially direct: In Kosovo, we have all come face to face with the European future, and it is frightening.63

In this context, the Europeans moved fairly rapidly toward their goal of building the capacity to respond to a military crisis where the USA doesn’t

60 Tonelson, Alan, NATO Burden-Sharing: Promises, Promises, in NATO Enters the 21st Century, Frank Cass Publishers, London, 200161 Grant, 1999, p.262 Peter Van Ham, Europe’s Common Defence Policy: Implications for the Trans-Atlantic Relationship, Security Dialogue, 13 (2) pp. 217 and 21863 Tonelson, p.51

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want to commit its troops. They saw two obvious, not mutually exclusive alternatives: the ability to use NATO (or the WEU subcontracting NATO) on their behalf or the EU running ‘autonomous’ military missions that do not even involve NATO64. However, the focus was really on a relatively modest-sized force in support of the Petersburg tasks, which the Amsterdam treaty had codified as ‘humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-keeping’.65

However, when EU Member-States were deciding in Nice – officially – that the new European Force should be operational and able to commit to non-offensive military operations within 60 days by 2003, some of their perceptions of international crime, such as terrorism, were still different. This is exemplified by the fact that from the 15 Member-States of the European Union, it was only six – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece at a later point – that had special legislature for terrorism. The rest considered terrorism to be a common crime subject to their respective national Criminal Law66. The unexpected events of September 11, 2001 did not only present the USA with ‘new’ security issues, but also created an even more intense feeling of the need to bind European Union Member-States even more together. For this reason, the Commission took the initiative for the creation of a pan-European legal framework that will be able to deal wholly with the issue of terrorism. Regardless of the fact that the American government largely forced European reaction to these terrorist attacks against the USA, the issuing of a European Arrest Warrant was a very important step in EU legislation. Nevertheless, a closer look at these developments through the treaties of the 1990s is also necessary.

The Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam

The Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties witnessed an attempt to create in the European Union a fully capable foreign policy actor, with the capacity to draw

64 Andréani, Gilles, Why Institutions Matter, Survival 42, Summer 200065 Rotfeld, Adam Daniel, Europe: The Transition to Inclusive Security, in SIPRI Yearbook 1998: Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 15766 TO VIMA, EU: Common Anti-Terrorist Policy, 30/9/2001

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upon means to underpin its actions. From the time of the Treaty of Rome, the European Community had focused its efforts on economic integration and eschewed the pursuit of a foreign ‘identity’, whilst leaving defence issues in the hands of NATO. By the 1970s, EPC was formed, in order to recognise the fact that there was an external dimension to trade cooperation and that EC members needed to coordinate their voice in international affairs. Therefore, the forging of a Common Foreign and Security Policy in the 1990s was able to build upon the foundations that had been laid before in EPC.

However, whilst the CFSP was born amid ambitious hopes that reflected the end of the Cold War, it has proved to be an arduous process to realise these in practice. The spheres of foreign affairs and defence are areas in which national states jealously guard their sovereign rights. Since 1990, this has been multiplied by the turbulence of events in Europe and by the process of adaptation in international organisations other than the European Union. What has emerged is a foreign policy and infant defence identity within the EU that has surpassed its EPC-predecessor, yet remains constrained and less capable than its proponents would have wanted. Whether such an imperfect system is equal to the challenges that it faces is far from certain.

i. The Treaty of Maastricht

The Treaty on European Union (TEU), which is also known as the Treaty of Maastricht, was signed on February 7, 1992 in Maastricht. After the end of the Cold War, this was the first Treaty that was signed in the European Community – to be renamed to European Union. After 1989 the general security objectives for Western Europe had changed, with the communist threat extinct, but with a Yugoslavia under dissolution. The European Community had already, under Commission President Jacques Delors, set an economic goal – the single internal market – for 1992, and a political re-definition of its role was necessary.

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In general, the Treaty of Maastricht gave the EU an altogether more supranational approach of how issues should be dealt with, especially by setting up the Common Foreign and Security Policy and an overall optimistic feeling reminiscent of the time of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, envisaging an ‘ever closer union’. After the Treaty of Maastricht the Union was to be based on the European Communities, which would be supplemented with new policies and forms of cooperation. Its main goals were:

- To promote a well-balanced and stable economic progress, especially with the creation of a space with no internal borders, with the strengthening of economic and social cohesion and with the founding of an economic and monetary union, which will in due course include a common currency;

- To confirm its identity in the international arena, especially with the assertion of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), including the future prospect for a common defence policy, which might at a given time lead on to Common Defence;

- To harbour the protection of the rights and the interests of its members by establishing a European nationality;

- To develop close cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs, and

- To maintain the acquis communautaire and develop it, in order to guarantee the effectiveness of the Community instruments and mechanisms.

In fact, the TEU divided the European Union in three pillars, different from each other in most aspects: the European Community, Justice and Home Affairs and thirdly that of Common Foreign and Security Policy. This means that the prospect for forming some sort of common defence policy is now taken under more serious consideration, which is reasonable since it was only one year before the signing of the TEU that the war in Yugoslavia began

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where Europe demonstrated its ineffectiveness in that field67. It also means that member-states are to increasingly – in theory – negotiate on a multilateral level.

However, the CFSP, despite its supranational description, would remain a largely intergovernmental affair, given the fact especially of the intra-national disagreements on the general role of the EU. As a result, the Treaty of Maastricht did not exclude the development of closer cooperation between two or more member states on a bilateral level in the framework of WEU (Western European Union) or of the Atlantic Alliance to the degree that it would not contradict multilateral cooperation or hinder it. Indeed, on November 5, 1993, France, Germany and Belgium took the important initiative to set parts of their armed forces under common leadership, which is what is known as Eurocorps. It had been set up under the administration of a ‘Common Commission’ made up of the chiefs of staff and the political directors of the three countries, and could be used individually by all three, or be available to WEU or even NATO68. With the benefit of hindsight – knowing that the Eurocorps is being considered to become the EU’s Rapid Reaction Force – one might come to the conclusion that indeed developments within the European Union are largely initiated by the bigger states, which has created what is labelled as ‘multi-speed’ Europe, where those who are able to respond collectively to new challenges will do so, whereas the rest may or may not join the efforts.

In the case of Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Treaty on European Union went a step further than the SEA. Whereas with the latter member-states undertook the obligation to “seek” to express common decisions and formulate common actions, with the TEU they were obliged to determine and practise a Common Foreign and Security Policy, which is the second pillar of

67 However, Desmond Dinan supports that even if a CFSP had been set up earlier than the war in Yugoslavia this would not have necessarily dictated a more efficient common European reaction because the problem lay in profound historical differences compounded by a radical contextual change caused by the end of the Cold War (p.522, An Ever Closer Union)68 Rees, G. Wyn, Common Foreign and Security Policy and defence: a lost opportunity?, in Lynch, P., Neuwahl, N. and Rees, G. W., Reforming the European Union – From Maastricht to Amsterdam, Longman 2000, Pearson Education Limited, 2000, pp. 162-176

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the European Union. It still remains a largely intergovernmental activity different from the supranational convictions laid down by the EU and is exempt from the European Court’s jurisdiction.69

ii. The Treaty of Amsterdam

So, the general political spirit that continued from 1993 on to 1997 did not show that member states were too keen on sharing their sovereignty with 12 or 15 partners, but their sovereignty would not be at stake if they engaged in smaller coalitions in the national foreign policy field, or surrendering a large part of it by being members of NATO as was examined previously. Although member states bind themselves with supranational written obligations, they have a tendency to resort to diplomacy-spawned compromises that will still give national governments a stronghold in matters of significant national interest, even when operating under supranational guidelines.

Subsequently, member-states are moving slowly in this field, which in the future will demand more handing-over of national sovereignty. Therefore, the revised TEU of Amsterdam showed very little progress in this area, although its revised Article 3 states that the Union will safeguard the cohesion of foreign policy action with its political framework on matters of foreign affairs, security, economy and development.

After the revision of Amsterdam, the goals of CFSP are:- The safeguarding of common values, fundamental interests,

independence and integrity of the European Union;- The strengthening of every aspect of the Union’s security;- The safeguarding of peace and the strengthening of international

security according to the Constitutional Charter of the United Nations, the Final Act of Helsinki and the Charter of Paris;

- The promotion of international cooperation;

69 Moussis, 2001

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- The development and establishment of democracy and the state of law, as well as the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The width of the goals of CFSP demonstrates that in real terms, it covers all of the matters of external relations and security. In turn, the Union’s external relations cover another very wide range of issues both internal and external, and in many of these issues national governments are still the key actors.

In attempting to assess the intrinsic worth of a European Common Foreign and Security Policy in the EU by looking at the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam, one should take into account the novelty that CFSP gave the EU a standing in foreign affairs, something that the EC had never previously enjoyed. Through the CFSP the Union obtained a new range of competences. It has also obtained the necessary framework to address the challenges of the future, ranging from security issues, such as terrorism and illegal immigration to overseas intervention and peacekeeping. With the Treaty of Maastricht, member states had the means in their disposal to develop them as they wished.70

Of course, it has to be mentioned that the CFSP fell very short of the expectations of the founders of the European Communities in 1957, and also that the early exercise of its powers proved inefficient. As was demonstrated, the general optimistic atmosphere prior to the Maastricht Treaty faded away during the uneasy compromises that member states eventually signed. By the time of the preparations for the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference, the momentum in foreign and defence cooperation had evaporated, which led to the Treaty of Amsterdam being only a treaty adjusting institutional technicalities and not substantially proceeding to any important reforms.

The outcome of the situation was that the EU found itself to be relatively weak and also divided in the face of critical security issues, such as the crises in former Yugoslavia, Algeria and Kosovo (at a later point, of course). When 70 Rees, G. Wyn, Common Foreign and Security Policy and defence: a lost opportunity?, in Lynch, P., Neuwahl, N. and Rees, G. W., Reforming the European Union – From Maastricht to Amsterdam, Longman 2000, Pearson Education Limited, 2000, pp. 162-176

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these problems arose, EU Member States struggled to speak with one voice and fluctuated on how to respond in the best way possible. The limitations of CFSP have been all too apparent; namely, the need to make foreign policy decisions based on consensus and the inadequate role of the EU Presidency which accords only a short period of attention to a problem. As always, the issue of leadership remains at the very heart of the CFSP challenge.

Nevertheless, the inadequacy of CFSP has created widespread consideration of enhancing its efficiency. For instance, the crisis in Kosovo has further stimulated the desire to have military capabilities at the command of the EU. However, these military means will not be used to fight major wars, leaving NATO as the ultimate decision-maker and executive organisation of major military operations. The presently under construction Rapid Reaction Force and the development of European military structures will not supplant or compete NATO. The Alliance will participate actively in the planning and forming of operations supplying the EU with the necessary means, as was agreed between the two. However, the military operations in Kosovo demonstrated the existence of a huge technological and administrative gap that divides the American armed forces from those of the Europeans.71

The CFSP contains the whole of the issues that concern the Union’s security, including the progressive development of a common defence policy, which can, if decided so by the European Council, lead to common defence at a given time. The Council of October 1993 clearly stated the goals of political security. It must look towards the reduction of dangers and undetermined factors that may hurt the territorial integrity and political independence of the Union and its member-states, their democratic character, their financial stability, as well as the stability of their neighbouring territories72.

In this field, a very important role is assigned to the Western European Union (WEU), a political-military alliance, in effect on May 6, 1955, which includes the automatic armed involvement of all its signatories in case of an attack

71 Dalis, Sotiris, From Amsterdam to Nice, Kritiki Editions, Athens, 2001, pp. 489-52672 Moussis, 2001

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against each of them. The Treaty of Amsterdam stated that the WEU was an integral part of the Union’s development, supporting it in the shaping of the defence aspects of CFSP. The EU was developing more institutional ties with the WEU with a view to incorporating it. At present, the WEU is responsible for what are called Petersburg tasks – humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks.

In Amsterdam, member-states accepted a substantial transfer of competences to the Union. In brief, these are73:

- The establishment of the High Representative (Art. 26)- The provision of a new troika consisted of the Commission President,

the High Representative and the Commissioner responsible for external affairs (Art. 18)

- The creation of Policy Unit accountable to the General Secretary and High Representative of the Council

- The creation of new means for Common Strategies (Art. 13)- The amelioration of Common Actions (Art. 14, EC) and Common

Positions (Art. 15, EC)- The establishment of Qualified Majority Voting in Common Strategies

decisions, and does not concern military or defence issues, and- The establishment of constructive abstention, which makes possible

the cooperation of those Member States that are willing and able to cooperate, unless of course abstention exceeds 1/3 of the votes (Art. 23.1).

In Amsterdam, CFSP was christened with clearer means and a more effective decision-making procedure. ‘Common strategies’ were to be agreed upon at the European Council – with unanimity – but applied through common actions and common positions decided by the Council with qualified majority voting. Member-states also have the right of constructive abstention, wherein they will simply not take part in the initiatives. However, they can still use their vetoing power, but it is more limited since the Council of Ministers with qualified majority can transfer matters to the European Council. The

73 Dalis, 2001

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functioning of the CFSP is under the control of the High Authority who is also the Secretary of the Council.

In general, the maintaining of the unanimity principle had as a result that qualitative progress – in any field – is generally dependent upon the political will of the all Member States. Even though no single Member State claims to pursue individual national policies in CFSP matters, many among them obviously set limits to transfers of their own national sovereignty in the same field.74

iii. The Treaty of Nice

Essentially, the Treaty of Amsterdam paved the way for the future development of the Union in matters of security and defence. Nevertheless, experience from recent years has shown that the practice of a common defence policy, including a common defence system, is nothing more than a choice depending on previous interlinked decisions. The steps taken in Nice in December 2000, namely the decision to build a European Rapid Reaction Force, were merely part of the official recognition of commitments that had been laid down and agreements that had been signed throughout the course of the 1990s.

The declaration of the member-states of the West European Union in 1992, the Petersburg declaration of WEU in the same year, Franco-German Eurocorps, all were ambitious projects. The decisions taken in the Summits of Amsterdam, Cologne (June 1999) and Helsinki (December 1999) dealt with the development of a European defence identity and its relationship with NATO. Even after a long delay, European states seemed to be taking seriously the possibility and the responsibility of their collective defence. Moreover, the negative experience of the Kosovo war (March – June 1999) led

74 Rees, G. Wyn, Common Foreign and Security Policy and defence: a lost opportunity?, in Lynch, P., Neuwahl, N. and Rees, G. W., Reforming the European Union – From Maastricht to Amsterdam, Longman 2000, Pearson Education Limited, 2000, pp. 162-176

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to the speeding up of the procedures for the adoption of a defence scheme for Europe.

The Summit in Cologne gave the EU the possibility to advance to independent crisis management operations with military and non-military means as was provided also in the Amsterdam treaty. According to the demands of the crisis, the means for the operations can either be provided for by European member-states or even by NATO. But before there can be a viable and effective defence system for Europe, there is a number of issues that have to be dealt with first. For instance, there must be an agreement on the coordination of common actions – leadership; it should also be made clear which WEU competences can be transferred to the EU, and how will the EU and NATO relations be defined in the context of Petersburg tasks; finally, there is the question of the effect that CFSP will have on the community budget, and perhaps the issue of the extension of parliamentary powers in CFSP.75

As far as the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF) is concerned, this will initially be made up of individual national forces and the decisions are to be taken exclusively by the European Union, as was decided in Nice. This is crucial to the Headline Goal that the Union set in the European Council of Feirra (June 2000), which foresees that by 2003 at the latest the European Union will be able to mobilise instantly a force of 60,000 men for crisis management tasks76. However, the idea of forming a European army has not proven to be very appealing to the wider European public and it was greeted with much cynicism in the media, especially the British Press.77

Despite the fact that various arrangements in the common defence system project throughout the 1990s had been carried out, member states met in Nice with many differences among them. It was mostly a diplomatic fight

75 Moussis, 200176 TO VIMA, February 200277 Shortly after the Nice Summit, satirical sketches and cynical articles appeared on various issues of THE INDEPENDENT, mocking the decision taken by the EU leaders to form a European army. It was mostly viewed as a façade organised by European Union officials.

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between the bigger and more influential states against the smaller ones, and the final result was an outcome of hard compromise. In this sense, the Treaty of Nice was not all too important for the successful development of a working CFSP system, but it gave the project of building some form of European army a more sound standing, while at the same time it prepared the ground for the future expansion of the European Union.

iv. The European Council of Laaken

Under the new political climate following the attacks against the United States in early September 2001, which brought with it ‘new’ security issues, and after having decided in Nice to create a regional independent military grouping, the European Council in Laaken on 14 – 15 December 2001, adopted the declaration that the European Union is committed to alleviating the consequences of the attacks of 11 September for the aviation sector with a view to ensuring a rapid and coordinated response from all Member States, leaving in reality the issue of the European army aside for a while.

Through the continuing development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), the strengthening of its capabilities, both civil and military, and the creation of appropriate structures within it and following the military and police Capability Improvement Conferences held in Brussels on 19 November 2001, the Union is considered capable of conducting some crisis management operations78. The Union also declared a determination to finalise swiftly arrangements with NATO, which will enhance the EU’s capabilities to carry out crisis-management operations over the whole range of Petersburg tasks. In the same way, the implementation of the Nice arrangements with the Union’s partners will augment its means for conducting crisis management operations. Development of the means and

78 Presidency Conclusions from the European Council Meeting in Laaken on 14 and 15 December 2001, taken from www.mfa.gov.tr, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey.

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capabilities at its disposal will, in theory, enable the Union progressively to take on more demanding operations.79

Although this seems very ambitious and optimistic for the EU, reality seems to be pointing to more shallow results. The wide debate around the potential danger that a European army might prove to be against NATO, kept the EU from wanting to create a military force that will be independent of American influence, as the French would have wanted. According to the final texts that resulted from the summits in Nice and one year later, in December 2001, in Laaken, the presently under construction Rapid Reaction Force and the development of European military structures will not supplant or compete NATO. The Alliance will participate actively in the planning and forming of operations supplying the EU with the necessary means, as was agreed between the two. However, the military operations in Kosovo demonstrated the existence of a huge technological and administrative gap that divides the American armed forces from those of the Europeans, something which is not only an indicator of the superiority of the USA in this respect, but also indicative of the much more profound problem of policy coordination that exists among European member states of the EU. However, this problem has not escaped the attention neither of the Commission nor of the individual governments, and in Laaken, under the determination of the United States to effectively fight terrorism, the initiative was taken to create a common legal framework that will ease inter-state cooperation within the European Union in this field. Perhaps, after the establishment of the Common Foreign and Security Policy with the Maastricht Treaty, the introduction of a High Representative for CFSP with the Treaty of Amsterdam, this development in European security represents the most radical step towards more efficient foreign policy coordination within the EU.

Conclusion: Is the European Union a ‘Political Dwarf’?

79 Idem.

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From looking at the developments in foreign policy coordination, one can easily come to the conclusion that where the national interest is involved in inter-state bargaining, positive developments towards integration occur grudgingly, belatedly and are often of a vague nature, in the sense that – particularly in foreign policy – the EU has not shown that it follows a clear policy-line. On the other hand, common positions on economic issues within the EU have not proven to be such an arduous procedure, and this is mainly the reason why so many commentators and academics have characterised the European Union as an ‘economic giant’, but a ‘political dwarf’. As will be demonstrated in the following chapter, the EU is indeed an economic giant, since it constitutes the largest single trading bloc in the world economic system. Nevertheless, when the international political status of the EU is discussed, it is inevitable that it will not be compared to that of the United States of America, and consequently characterised as inadequate to match the EU’s economic strength. In this respect, European political leaders have failed repeatedly to formulate common positions vis-à-vis crises and conflicts that emerged in areas of vital interest to Europe, such as the Balkans and the Middle East, necessitating in a way American intervention. From this viewpoint, it is true that the European Union lacks much of the political strength that it should have.

However, this is only one perspective of looking at the political developments in the European Union. First of all, it should be made clear that the protection of the national interest is a great responsibility, and that this responsibility is represented by national foreign ministers and heads of state, who take foreign policy issues to the negotiating table. The national interest is furthermore something very broadly defined, and therefore it can be affected by a large number of external and internal factors, such as the geographical positioning of the country, the climate, the temperament of its people, its history, its social construction, ideological orientations, the personalities of leaders, the role of the media, private economic interests and so forth, which are all factors that interact with each other80. This, combined with various unanticipated developments of both the domestic as well as the external 80 Theodoropoulos, Byron, How Independent Foreign Policy Really Is, To Vima, 31/3/2002

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political environment, renders foreign policy making at the national level a very complicated affair. Given that these factors differ in influence in every individual country within the EU, it is a logical conclusion that the coordination of foreign policy positions between the Member States is a much harder task.

Nonetheless, during the 1990s, the developments that took place in the framework of EU foreign policy have had a very significant impact on the Member States themselves. The realisation of the need to form common positions on foreign affairs as recognised and incorporated in the Treaty of Maastricht with the Common Foreign and Security Policy, has led European politicians to the realisation that they have to combine their efforts to develop a Defence Identity that will enhance the role of the CFSP. It is clear that a decision in one functional area (foreign policy coordination with the establishment of the CFSP) has caused a functional spillover to extend the scope of the specific policy area (the development of a European Army, as a representation of a more adequate CFSP). Even if this spillover is an unanticipated consequence that resulted from the creation of Member States’ ‘power-gaps’, it is an indication that the EU is committed to constant evolution, since it has to adapt to the new circumstances prompted by these gaps in power. In any case, attempts made to look at integration by looking at it as a process of gradual Europeanisation of national policies prove this point.

Another important factor that has to be taken into account when talking about the EU’s political inefficacy is that foreign policy decision-making, and even more so coordination of foreign policy at the European level, is a time consuming procedure, and the changes that come about that are contextualised in the treaties can only have a concrete effect in the long term. In the meantime, the complex interdependence of states in the global system has as a result that sometimes decisions that are taken in the short term, can be affected or complicated by external factors and have different-than-anticipated long terms effects. In this sense, whether developments in

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the EU’s foreign policy are more positive or negative is rather a subjective matter.

Summing up, one conclusion from the developments in the CFSP is that over time, a substantial amount of competences has been transferred to the EU, and it is becoming ever clearer to the Member States that isolationism in foreign policy is not a beneficial position to hold within the Union. Therefore the ‘Community Method’ seems to be in the process of gradually being implemented to foreign policy, a statement that is backed up by the introduction of the High Representative for the CFSP with the Treaty of Amsterdam. What is occurring, is that the European Union is gaining political weight through these developments, yet the Member States are still able to play a leading role in its affairs. The final outcome is that the EU, caught in the middle of rapid international developments, is relatively powerless compared to the USA – in terms of global influence through political might – but it is remarkably strong when compared to the individual Member States that make it up. From this perspective, it is more helpful to claim that the European Union is not a political dwarf, but rather an organisation that is in the early stages of the process of developing itself into an actor with an international impact.

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CHAPTER IIIThe EU in the 21st Century Global Order

The USA vs. EU – A case of choosing between the lesser of two evils

My fundamental assumption in this chapter is that American power lies heavily on its military superiority in comparison to the majority of the other

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states. By common acceptance, this power has to be counterbalanced in some way or another in order to maintain a more just world order. If the European Union commits itself to the supranationalisation of its foreign policy, this will in theory dictate much better policy coordination and more effective crisis management. Furthermore, if the EU acquires the ability to conduct an independent foreign policy, an overall spillover of powers will appear within the global economic and political capabilities of the EU, which will in turn provide the necessary political and economic counterweight to the global, hegemonic power of the USA, provided that such a strong EU does not adopt the same controversial superpower behaviour carried out by the United States.

As has been demonstrated, the European Union has been committed to the gradual build-up of the necessary institutional machinery that will enable it in the future to play a more important role in world affairs. This need to take up a leading role in global politics is also recognised by those EU officials who wish to see an eventual supranationalisation of the CFSP, as an expression of a European Union. However, at present, the Union’s political voice is muted by the robust presence of the United States of America. It is commonly accepted that the USA have the ‘upper hand’ in most respects, having thus created a one-polar world structure. The USA have certain standard idealistic patterns about how the world should be run and wish to apply these wherever possible, irrespective of the various historical, ethnic and political differences that exist outside USA soil.

This is proven also throughout history from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 – where American President Woodrow Wilson was celebrating the doctrine of national self-determination as a democratic principle that was eventually the source for all the conflicts that took place in the Balkans over the 20 th century – until the more recent American interventions in Bosnia in the 1990s and in Afghanistan in 2001, as well as in the mediation regarding the peace settlement in the Middle East. In the case of Bosnia, the Americans, in order to provide a final solution, held democratic elections according to their own tradition but the end result was more the creation of a state with a ‘virtual’

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economy, sustained by the troops that were maintaining peace in the region. Almost similar is the case in Afghanistan where after the expulsion of the Taliban regime, the western world was celebrating the freedom that the Afghan people would now be enjoying, while at the same time their state lies in a terrible condition81, sustained by foreign investment. As far as the Middle East is concerned, the attention of the media has been caught by the various contradicting statements on the desirable peace project for the region82. In other words, in a more extremist interpretation of this kind of intervention, one would conclude that the United States of America wish to create a world that does not hinder their own national interest, whatever that may be, an aphorism admitted to also by a number of American commentators83.

Particularly the George W. Bush Administration has caused the reaction of many common people and otherwise in the world, not only because of its inherent national(istic) political orientation, but also because of inconsistency, as the President himself, within a short period of time has confused everyone about his intentions for the peace settlement in the Middle East, on the one hand ordering Israel to cease fire and on the other calling Mr. Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister, a ‘man of peace’84.

Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the fact that had it not been for American intervention throughout the 1990s, especially in the Balkans, the situation might have turned out to be a lot worse, and furthermore the Taliban would still be ruling over Afghanistan. The United States of America have a decisive way of dealing with crises and conflicts, a method that although effective, is viewed with criticism from the rest of the politically active or inactive world. The problem, however, is that the United States of America still act on an idealistic basis, talking in universal terms and claiming to stand for the ‘free’ world, but in reality they only provide superficial temporary solutions whose

81 Based on Tariq Ali, Who Will Heed the Cries of the Weak?, from Oikonomikos Taxydromos [The Financial Post] (in Greek), 29/12/200182 Sanger, David E., ‘Simple’ President Bush and a Complicated World, in The New York Times, taken from To Vima, 5/5/2002 83 Charles Krauthammer, Unilateralism is the key to our success, The Washington Post, taken from The Guardian Weekly, December 20-26, 200184 TO VIMA, 21/4/2002

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negative effects – such as the deaths of so many innocent people as in the case of the Kosovo war and Bosnia – outlive the positive ones – such as the restoration of democracy, the preserving of peace, disarmament, etc. – exactly because they are solutions that disregard the political, diplomatic and economic technicalities of foreign affairs.

According to academics, politicians and commentators alike, the world is characterised by a very anarchical structure, where – in reality – the powerful do as they wish, even in conscious disrespect of international treaties especially on Human Rights and the Environment. Other, more radical views see that at some point in time there will be an inevitable clash of interests between the USA and the European Union85. Whatever the predictions for the future evolution of world politics, the issue is that at present, American military superiority can generate enough power for it to conduct its unilateral policy in foreign affairs.

The European Union, on the other hand, seems to differ in this respect form the United States of America; instead of military power, the EU draws international legitimacy from its trade relations and general economic relationships with third countries. The trade relations of the European Union will be dealt with in due course.

Tsoukalis characterises the European Union as a power based mainly on economic weapons and moral values and much less on military might, an issue which now the EU is taking more into consideration, given the recent developments in creating a European Military Force. Tsoukalis supports that even when the 15 Member-States of the European Union agree to act in common, their decision will not make an impact if it is differentiated from the policy lines of the United States of America. The reason for this is that unfortunately, at present, the military strength and even more so the military superiority of the USA has made Europe – and many other states in the world – largely dependent on them for the supply of military equipment. Consequently, it is important to gain access to NATO – American – structures, 85 Kouloumbis, Theodoros, The Atlantic-European Dilemma, To Vima, 25/2/2001

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which in turn dictates the necessary political consent towards the USA86. In this way, present-day Europe is bound both militarily and politically to America, granting the US superpower status at all times. The United States have taken advantage of this situation and the end result is that on the one hand it is true that they have been able to end conflicts – particularly during the 1990s, as a result probably of the ambitious project Ronald Reagan had embarked on during the 1980s to strengthen American defensive and offensive military capabilities – albeit through unilateralism, but on the other, they act purely on self-interest, breaching fundamental laws of human rights in order to achieve their goal87.

The doctrine of unilateralism has been very popular for a number of American presidents, ever since their determination to transform their country into the world’s only superpower. The problematic essence of unilateralism is that it is a highly national(istic) method, and American unilateralism in modern times outlives America’s image as a land of opportunity and a ‘shelter’ for those in need. Criticisms on American unilateralism do not only come from Europe, but from within America itself. For instance, Dr. Paul Kennedy, a Historian from the University of Yale wrote in Le Monde that:

When we [the USA] are in need of help – to arrest terrorists, to make use of air force bases – we play a team game. When the international plans don’t suit us, we withdraw88.

In this way, the USA carefully select the cases in which they intervene, acting mainly on economic interest, masking their intervention behind claims of humanitarian values. In considering this within the context of world order and its rules, the authority of criticism against the United States, Noam Chomsky, writes that:

It is all very well to speak abstractly of the ‘innovative but justifiable extension of international law’ that creates a right of ‘humanitarian intervention’, or to accord to the enlightened states the right to use

86 Tsoukalis, Loukas, The Mild Power of Europe, Kathimerini [The Daily](in Greek), 22/3/200287 Noam Chomsky, New Military Humanism – Lessons from Kosovo, Pluto Press, 199988 Paul Kennedy, USA: The End of Innocence, To Vima, 10/3/2002

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military force where they ‘believe it to be just’. But it should also be recognised that, hardly by accident, the states that are self-qualified as enlightened turn out to be those that can act as they please. And that in the real world, there are two options:

1. Some kind of framework of world order, perhaps the U.N. Charter, the International Court of Justice, and other existing institutions, or perhaps something better if it can be devised and broadly accepted.

2. The powerful do as they wish, expecting to receive the accolades that are the prerogative of power89.

In general, the line that has been followed by the USA on military affairs has been that violence will eradicate violence. This has been evident throughout the Cold War years, where the crushing arms build-up of both the Americans and the Soviets was based on the reasoning of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), onto the most recent vindictive attack against Afghanistan, where one act of terror would be retaliated with a war on terrorism. This recent war inevitably generated various opinions, positive or negative on the way that the USA chose to act, regardless of the success in abolishing the Taliban regime. Of the positive opinions were that had it not been for the United States the radical and undemocratic Taliban would still be ruling in Afghanistan, which is a truthful statement. However, the Taliban had not constituted a direct threat to the United States in the past, and therefore they were able to rule at free will over the area; the consecutive breach of human rights, the oppression of women, the lack of freedom and democracy, were not sufficient reasons per se to convince the USA that it needed to act.

In this respect, accusations should also be directed against the European Union for political delay in urgent military and other political matters of global significance. The main problem is that no superpower will act decisively unless it is out of national interest, and the United States have proven this point time and time again. Of course, it is not suggested that the European Union – if it had the means – would have explicitly acted in faith of its 89 Chomsky, 1999, p.154

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proclamations; decisive action would have probably been overshadowed by the complex bureaucratic system of the EU, particularly if, according to the Intergovernmentalist paradigm and regardless of a supranationalisation of the CFSP, it remained an international organisation that would be largely influenced by the political – and national – power aspirations of the individual players within the EU90. However, as will be further elaborated in due course, the EU has expressed the desire to become a different type of global actor than the United States, a desire that is based on the Left-wing political background of the EU itself.

Furthermore, Daniel Cohn-Bendit labels Europe as the only ‘critical mass’ that has the power to withstand American neo-liberalism and consequently counterweight its military might, through the development of a competitive European model, a view also shared by Nikos Mouzelis in his recent publication entitled For An Alternative Third Way (2001). As a traditional left-wing thinker, Cohn-Bendit believes in the power of the Left, especially as regards the future of the European Union, and among others he attributes a lot of potential to the economic power of the EU, which can help it regulate global capitalism in such a way so as to provide a more stable and balanced ground for all the players concerned. It is important to indicate here that the development of a more balanced system for the global economy will, in theory, eliminate many of the world’s economic, and consequently social injustices, thus creating more potential for global stability, by diminishing various threats – such as suicide bombings and other terrorist acts – that are triggered by these injustices. Cohn-Bendit believes that – given the political delay of the EU – American unilateralism has been reinforced in the ‘terrorist crisis’, and a political unification of Europe will prevent the EU from losing any more ground in the international political scene. On the other hand, he claims that the European Union lacks a substantive amount of political courage, which is necessary to generate radical developments91. 90 Based on Ben Hall, A New Model for European Integration?, Centre For European Reform Online, October 199891 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, Europe Must provide a Counterweight to the American Model , Oikonomikos Taxydromos [The Financial Post](in Greek), 16/2/2002. Of course, in Europe, the Left is undergoing a seeming crisis with extreme Right-wing formations winning seats in parliament in many of the European countries members of the EU. This is a sign that the people are probably not satisfied with the socialists’ and the social democrats’ lack of commitment to clear goals.

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From reading the views of analysts and commentators, it becomes evident that although the European Union has proven incapable of dealing efficiently with crises in which it has many interests – such as the Balkans and the Middle East – there is always the underlying notion that if it did have the capability to act decisively, things might have turned out for the better.

This is mainly due to the fact that the European Union has always stressed, officially and otherwise, the need to maintain peacekeeping forces and peace monitors in regions where war or conflict broke out, to send diplomats to deal with conflicts before they actually break out, to impose, or threaten to impose sanctions in order to establish peace in various regions, to carry out humanitarian and general peacekeeping tasks. The 15 governments of the EU seem to have a common belief in non-violent use of military power, which is also evident through the declarations made in the various treaties throughout the 1990s, such as the declaration of the Petersburg Tasks92. The emphasis has always been on dealing efficiently with humanitarian issues, such as medical help, food supplies and clothing and peace monitoring, and bombings were only agreed to under the motivation of the United States of America.

Nevertheless, this dedication of European politicians to humanitarian tasks can also be interpreted as a result of the European Union’s military inferiority in comparison with the military structures of the USA. The European Union simply lacks the technological and scientific means to develop military equipment equal to those of the USA, whereas the United States have been building up their arms system for almost half a century. Greek substitute Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Tasos Giannitsis has pointed out that Europe cannot become a superpower equal to the magnitude of America, not only because of the aforementioned point but also because the EU as an organisation is very dependent on external factors; EU officials recognise that European economic and monetary policy is also affected by the Union’s

92An exception to this rule may very well be Great Britain that has frequently supported and fully collaborated in American military initiatives, such as the war against Iraq.

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general political choices, and they don’t consider that there is an urgent need to disentangle the EU from US military dependence, without this being interpreted as a hindrance towards an eventual political union93.

It is true that there are not many significant differences in the interests of the USA and those of the EU. They both wish to create a world safe for democracy, until now they have both followed similar neo-liberal economic lines, and they have both intervened in regions outside their own territory. However, the USA uses its military strength as its sole source of legitimacy as a superpower, since the neo-liberal economic paradigm has reached its limits in benefiting capitalism, and has nothing more to offer, at least on a social scale94. The European Union on the other hand draws legitimacy out of its political status that has been elevated with the functioning of the Economic and Monetary Union, as well as its trade relations with third countries. In other words, even if the EU were the superpower that the USA is today, there is evidence that it might have been different, in the sense that it would be more politically sensitive, and not as assertive95.

However, Intergovernmentalists could render this argument irrelevant by claiming that even if the European Union transformed itself into a politically tighter entity, this would not hinder it from behaving as a unitary actor in a global playing field with traditional power aspirations, behaving similarly to the United States today. However, the difference between the USA and the EU lies in the fact that in the former there is no strong opposition from Left-wing forces, and even if there is, it is successfully subdued by the dominant neo-liberal paradigm. This means that the United States is not willing to transform the global governance system, at least not in a way that would be inspired from some traditional left-wing values, such the elimination of economic and social inequalities. On the other hand, the European Union is

93 Giannitsis, Tasos, Europe can’t become a Superpower, Oikonomikos Taxydromos [The Financial Post](in Greek), 23/2/200294 This argument is also supported by Theodoros Paggalos, former Greek Foreign Minister in the article entitled Economic Globalisation and the Federalisation of Europe: Facing the New Challenges (in Greek), from To Vima, 9/6/200195 Based on a speech by Chris Patten, A European Foreign Policy: Ambition and Reality, in Paris, 15/6/2000 at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI)

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constituted by countries with a long tradition in left-wing politics, such as France, Germany, and even Great Britain, Greece, Italy and Spain. As a consequence, the EU is built upon values that respect both neo-liberal rules and left-wing expectations, a unique combination that is capable – if elaborated upon by political leaders – of generating positive change to the global governance system.

Furthermore, politics in the European Union are largely dependent on national political outcomes and on the extent to which national governments are able to commit to common European action. Europe’s historical experience of war has dictated the political line on military affairs that has been followed by politicians, especially since the founding of the European Communities. The dedication to building up enforced national military structures has since been limited to those regions of the European Union where neighbouring countries outside the EU are considered to be a potential threat to the national integrity of those regions, such as the situation with Greece and Turkey.

As was mentioned, the politics that have been followed so far by European Union government leaders have mostly drawn from the Social Democratic paradigm, emphasising the importance of social welfare, education and the environment. The Political Thought of Anthony Giddens, the Third Way, which was adopted and developed by Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, seemed to have a significant effect on the national policies of European governments96. Third Way politics was projected as an imaginative blend of neo-liberal and social democratic values, a politics that attempted to surpass the dead-ends of neo-liberal and compatible social democratic thought97. It appeared that European political leaders had embarked on a programme to develop a capitalist system that would not host the dangers of neo-liberalism and that would provide the citizens with all the benefits they would gain from social democracy. Therefore, a commitment to the development of the European

96 Based on Anthony Giddens, A Third Way for the European Union?, in The Future Shape of Europe edited by Mark Leonard, 2001 taken from www.globaldimensions.net 97 For more on the criticism of the Third Way see Mouzelis Nikos, For An Alternative Third Way – Revised Modernisation and the Dead-Ends of Anthony Giddens’ Political Thought, Athens 2001

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Union into a fully capable military force would mean that funds would have to be cut from the national budgets from sectors such as social welfare or education – which is mostly the case when governments decide to reinforce their military structures – an act that consequently would firstly displease the people, and secondly would increase mistrust towards politicians in general. In developing national and supranational military structures equal to those of the USA, with a view to making European foreign policy coordination an easier task, the European Union would resemble dangerously the American model, where the development of military structures has been the quintessence of almost every American President’s policy, to the expense of education, social welfare and most aspects of social policy.

However, what is more important is the fact that politicians in Europe are very much dependent on the power of the voters; the people’s dissatisfaction with politics does make a difference. The most apparent example of such a case was the first round of the French Presidential Elections of April 21st 2002. The social democrat Lionel Jospin did not succeed in convincing the people of his programme that was inspired by socialist values but was not in itself socialist, and as a result he didn’t manage to pass through to the second round of elections; instead, the ultranationalist leader of the Front National, Jean-Marie Lepen, managed to get into the second round, and fortunately he only got a mere 20%. The ambiguity of social democratic programmes has caused a large voting abstention to the advantage of right wing, and sometimes extreme right wing political formations98. Social Democrat leaders in the European Union have promised to create an economic and social haven for their citizens, but to the dissatisfaction – as it turned out – of the public, sensitive issues, such as immigration and domestic violence, were either neglected or not tackled with properly. Although this seeming ‘rise’ of the Right and of Conservatism is a negative development for the EU as a whole, it is on the other hand a very important testimony to the power of democracy within the European Union: it has clarified the fact that such political inconsistency is not tolerated by a large majority of European voters.

98 To Vima, 28/4/2002

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By its very nature, the European Union has many values in common with the United States of America, especially on an economic level99, but there are also significant differences between them, such as the more active involvement of the people in politics. Furthermore, drawing from the example of the Dutch government, which recently handed in its resignation for failure to fulfil peacekeeping tasks in Srebreniča in 1997, it can be said that European governments recognise their own mishandlings, which has never been the case for the United States of America. This is an indicator that European politicians realise that sometimes they cannot offer anything more, because they have exhausted their political limits. Whether they resign out of principle, such as Mr. Oskar Lafontaine’s case, who was member of the SPD in Germany, or the British Minister of Transport who resigned after failure to guarantee the safety of public transport in late May 2002, or even removed from government posts on account of their bluntness in the insistence of maintaining clear goals, such as the case of Mr. Paggalos of PASOK in Greece, European politicians are often accountable to public scrutiny.

All this – the involvement of the public in politics, the dissatisfaction of the European people with social democratic programmes, the rise of right wing political formations, the assertive foreign policy of the USA, the irony of military humanism – is evidence that firstly there is need for a shift of emphasis of European Union officials and secondly that the European Union can, if it obtains the means, affect the world in a more humane way. A careful consideration of the aforementioned facts should lead European politicians to the conclusion that the European Union has the potential to provide a better model for global governance only if it surpasses national aspirations that keep the EU tied to the United States of America.

The Importance of the Europeanisation of the CFSP

99 Ali, Tariq, Who will listen to the cries of the weak? , Oikonomikos Taxydromos [The Financial Post](in Greek), 29/12/2001

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In itself, the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union is very important, as its conception was a result of the rapidly changing security needs that Europe was confronted with after the end of the Cold War. The setting up and the development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy was initially conceived as a means that would provide the Union with an opportunity to acquire the role of a political actor with an international impact. However, the CSFP has as yet remained a largely intergovernmental activity, despite the gradual transfer of competences in this field to the Union, with the prospect of the Europeanisation of foreign policy.

In his often-cited article Imaging the Future of Euro-Polity with the Help of new Concepts, Philippe C. Schmitter had anticipated Europeanisation processes.  He had predicted that in the future the EC/EU authority would expand far beyond EC matters including the Common market issue and pointed out that even in the ‘high politics’ of foreign and security policy, the European level will have a deep impact on hitherto exclusive domains of national policy.  According to him, within the period 1992-2001 “Mostly policy decisions at the EC level” were to be expected in cases of “Economic-military assistance” as well as in “Diplomacy and IGO membership”, while “All policy decisions at the EC level” seemed likely for all matters concerning “Commercial negotiations”. As much as the score “Defense and war” is concerned, he predicted that policy decisions would be made both at the national and EC/EU level100.

Following Robert Ladrech, Europeanisation can be defined as a process in which Europe, and especially the EU, becomes an increasingly more relevant and important point of political reference for the actors at the level of the member states. Europeanisation therefore involves an incremental process reorienting the direction and shape of politics to the degree that EU/CFSP dynamics become part of the organisational logic of national politics and policy-making101.

100 Schmitter, Philip C., Imaging the Future of Euro-Polity with the Help of New Concepts, in Marks, Gary; Scharpf, Fritz W.; Schmitter, Philip C. and Streeck, Wolfgang (eds.), Governance in the European Union, London, 1996101 Ladrech, Robert, Europeanisation of domestic politics and institutions: the case of France, in: Journal of Common Market Studies 1 (1994), p.69-88.

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The view that the eventual Europeanisation of the CFSP should be a direct goal for the European Union is enhanced also by Mr. Chris Patten’s speech on European Foreign Policy in Paris, on 15 June 2000. According to Mr. Patten, one of the reasons that the EU should move forward – and has expressed the need to do so – to the Europeanisation of its foreign policy, is the changing relationship with the USA. He acknowledges the fact that American interventionism has always been effective, but he identifies a potential political danger in American unilateralism, adding that “Europe will encourage that tendency [prevalence of US unilateralism] if it is not seen to be doing more for itself”102.

Jürgen Habermas also agrees that particularly the present government of the United States of America is conducting unilateral policies irrespective of alliances and international treaties, and he stresses the fact that this behaviour on the part of the United States should be perceived by the European Union as an opportunity to distinguish itself in foreign policy issues such as the Middle East and the Balkans:

The markedly national orientation of the Bush Administration can be regarded as an opportunity for the EU to define a more distinctive foreign and security policy towards the conflicts in the Middle East and the Balkans, and relations with Russia and China. Differences that are coming more into the open in environmental, military and juridical fields contribute to a soundless strengthening of European identity. Still more important is the question of what role Europe wishes to play in the Security Council and, above all, in world economic institutions. Contrasting justifications of humanitarian intervention, not to speak of basic economic outlooks, divide the founder states of the EU from Great Britain and Scandinavia. But it is better to bring these smouldering conflicts out into the open than to let the EU splinter over dilemmas that remain unresolved. In any case, a Europe of two or three speeds is preferable to one that breaks up or crumbles away103.

102 Patten, Chris, A European Foreign Policy: Ambition and Reality, Speech delivered in Paris, 15/6/2000 at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI)103 Habermas, Jürgen, Why Europe Needs A Constitution, in New Left Review, September – October 2001

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It is clear from this that some sort of Europeanisation process as regards the EU’s foreign policy is necessary, whether all Member States participate simultaneously or not. Returning to Mr. Patten, he had stated that if Member States agreed to provide the EU with the resources to carry out its affairs more easily, this would help develop an effective CFSP that would provide the Union with the opportunity to contribute to “a healthier global balance”. He believes that Europe will be taken seriously in issues such as the UN and environmental policy where the US policy-line is wrong, only if Member States seriously combine their efforts. As a first means to enhance the effectiveness of the CFSP, Mr. Patten suggests an active involvement of the Commission in the EU’s foreign policy field104.

In other words, most of the literature and commentary on the role of the European Union in the 21st century recognises the need to Europeanise the CFSP. An effective Common Foreign and Security Policy will be one that requires that the most fundamental aspect of national sovereignty – foreign affairs – be handed over to the Union. With the EU having a successful common currency and an independent foreign policy, it is inevitable that its role in the international scene will be enhanced. In creating a mechanism that will eventually provide the EU with its own Defence Identity – through the creation and development of a European Military Force – another very important aspect of the Integration Process will have been fulfilled, the Internal Market being already a reality and the Euro circulating with no apparent problems.

Here, however, it must be mentioned that the political climate in Europe does not seem to be very positive for radical progress in the Integration Process. The political parties of the democratic Left are now at a critical turning point. The Right has come to power already in France, Italy, Denmark, Austria and Norway and the Spanish socialist PSOE is still in opposition, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is also facing hard electoral battles. In Great Britain and Greece, the Labour Party and PASOK have the majority in parliament, but are

104 Patten, Chris, A European Foreign Policy: Ambition and Reality, 15/6/2000

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both under pressure from various interest groups105. Such political dissonance among the governments of the European Union – almost half of them have conservative governments and the rest social democrat, or coalitions – may very well affect the developments in European foreign policy coordination. Mr. Pat Cox expressed his concern on this matter in a recent radio-interview on the BBC World Service Programme on May 5, 2002, where he stated that this superficial surfacing of the Right and the extreme Right will indeed influence politics at the European level for at least two reasons; firstly because it will infiltrate the EU with conservative values, and secondly because now, in any case, social democrats will have to finalise their policies in order to re-gain their popularity among the European people.

What is perhaps more worrying is that the Conservative politicians in Europe differ very little ideologically from the overall stance of the USA, and particularly from George W. Bush. Consequently, the relationships between European conservatives – such as Silvio Berlusconi, and to a lesser extent Jacques Chirac – and the Bush Presidency are likely to remain unhindered. From this perspective, a potential rise of the Right and of Conservatism will mute many of the arguments against the controversy surrounding American global political and economic behaviour, and it is even more likely that the EU will develop into an international organisation. This means of course that the development of common positions, especially as regards issues that affect directly the national interest, will continue to be an arduous process. It is my contention that particularly the future of the CFSP seems uncertain if conservative powers are to take over in the European Union. Conservatism in Europe hasn’t shown evidence that it is capable of offering a well balanced and well organised system of governance, and judging from the support that most conservative leaders in Europe offered to the United States following the attacks of September 2001 on New York and Washington, it doesn’t seem willing to promote any kind of change to the contemporary mode of governance. Should the European Union develop into an international organisation, the level of ‘communication’ between the Member States at the supranational level, at least as far as the CFSP is concerned, will remain more 105 TO VIMA, The New Face of the European Left, 21/4/2002

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or less at the same relevantly low standards of present-day EU. In other words, the European Union has very limited potential of becoming an important international actor, if conservative powers prevail.

On the other hand, it was stated above that this seeming popularity of the Right is mainly a result of the people’s dissatisfaction with social democratic programmes that have prevailed in EU politics for at least the past 5 years. The results of the first round of the French Presidential elections have definitely constituted a shock to Social Democracy. What has become apparent – albeit at a late stage – to social democrats is that some sensitive political issues that were mainly included in conservative agendas – such as immigration and domestic security – had not been dealt with efficiently. From this perspective, there is already a growing number of political commentators that point to the resurgence of the Left only through a radical re-definition of social democratic policies, which will in turn provide it with credible and above all sustainable programmes that will harmonise domestic policies with those at EU level. Thus, an eventual supranationalisation of the CFSP through an inspirational social democratic programme will provide the CFSP with enough strength for it to be considered as a legitimate foreign policy instrument for the EU that will certainly be more ‘progressive’ and less ‘aggressive’ than US foreign policy, since it will be based on credible social democratic values. Contrary to the aspirations of the Right, an EU that is based on the Left has definitely more potential of obtaining a firm political structure, if that structure were to be represented by a European Constitution, for instance.

In other words, an effective Common Foreign and Security Policy is a very important step towards a Political Union. Jürgen Habermas exposed his views on the political unification and the international role of the EU when discussing a Constitution for Europe, among which he stated that:

… it is clear that while the original political aims of European integration have lost much of their relevance, they have since been replaced by an even more ambitious political agenda. […] In the course of the Kosovo war, its participants became aware of subtle yet

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important differences in the way that the US and UK on the one hand and the continental nations of Europe on the other, justified this humanitarian intervention—the former resorting to maxims of traditional power politics, the latter appealing to more principled reasons for transforming classical international law into some sort of cosmopolitan order. This is a difference that exemplifies the rationale for developing a European Union capable of speaking with one voice in matters of foreign and security policy, and bringing a stronger influence of its own to bear on NATO operations and UN decisions. Recent attempts by Persson, Solana and Patten to mediate between North and South Korea offer the first sign of a more serious intention by the EU to engage in global affairs106.

However, as has been repeatedly said, if the European Union wishes to obtain a complete and efficient Common Foreign and Security Policy, it will have to develop its own Defence Identity, or what is labelled as a European Army. The development of a Defence Identity for the EU will be followed by various implications, such as the pragmatic financial cost of the development of satisfactory military structures on national budgets, and the political cost of the relationships with the United States of America.

Creating a parallel structure to NATO surely will encourage the ‘decoupling’ – in a way, the disentanglement of Europe from the United States – that so many analysts have feared. This however, need not be the case. A European force capable of acting in situations where NATO should not become formally committed as an alliance serves a valuable purpose, and updating the Cold War formula for dealing with ‘out of area’ contingencies to that end, would solve the potential problem created by the force. In this conception, NATO members able to intervene where key interests are at stake should act, while those unable to do so should either support their allies or maintain a dignified silence. This approach draws on painful experiences from crises in NATO’s earlier years involving Algeria, Suez, and Vietnam. It builds effectively on the different capabilities of national forces within the alliance, and worked well in the Persian Gulf. It is only in this context that an EU force that serves as an 106 Habermas, Jürgen, Why Europe Needs A Constitution, in New Left Review, September – October 2001

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effective, albeit unofficial, extension of NATO rather than a substitute is not a very unwise option. The strengthening of capabilities within NATO while ensuring a reasonable distribution of alliance burdens is a necessary corollary to this approach. Operationally, it means a division of labour that assigns tasks to the most capable. The ethos of ‘all for one and one for all’ must remain sacrosanct to avoid creating a ‘two-tiered’ alliance driven by discord. The voice that European allies rightly demand can be secured only by effective participation. But while all members must upgrade their national military forces, European officials were correct when they warned that ‘dividing NATO into real soldiers and escorts who walk the children to school is the first way to divide the alliance itself’. The problems posed by so called humanitarian interventions will not be resolved by dividing the USA from Europe or constructing a parallel structure that may, or may not work107.

It is the widespread view that successfully pooling together the military experience of NATO and the sophisticated diplomatic machinery of the EU would somehow inevitably make dealing with conflicts within and outside Europe easier. Hence, in theory, an effective guarantor of European security will have emerged with the creation of a European army. This seems optimistic in its own respect, but it is also a complicated situation. American and European interests may resemble on an economic and general political level – through a common belief in trade liberalisation and democracy – but concerns have been expressed on the part of the USA towards the creation of an independent European Military Force.

An independent European military force will not only have implications of academic importance to a potential disadvantage or dissatisfaction of the United States but some very pragmatic ones indeed. First of all, there may be consequences such as the removal of some – not all – of NATO’s military bases from certain parts in the European continent, which would be under European ‘jurisdiction’. In this way, the United States might lose some potential spheres of influence by withdrawing territorially their military

107 www.fpri.org Foreign Policy Research Institute, Europe’s Rapid Reaction Force: What, Why and How?, Volume 2, Number 2, February 2001

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forces. Secondly, the American war industry certainly would not welcome the idea of an independent European force; most European member states purchase American military equipment, such as F-16 and F-15 aircrafts for instance. If, under the guidelines of the European army, all member states must obtain ‘Euro-fighter’ aircrafts, in order to maintain an equal standard throughout the Union, this will suggest a major financial loss for American war enterprise.

Of course, there is a lot to be carried out in very little time. Europe is a long way from matching American technology in military development, and international political events dictate that states should be ever prepared to face any political/military crisis at any given time. However, even if in the future European statesmen decide that there is no immediate need or it is not possible to create an independent European Army, this will not mean that the European Union will have lost its opportunity to provide a counterweight to the hegemonic power of the United States and thus become an important international actor. Although an independent European Army would be a prerequisite for more political power, the EU has equally powerful means to generate change for the better in other fields, notably the control of the functioning of global economy.

Globalisation and the European Union

The Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union is only one aspect of the three-fold framework of the Union’s External Relations. The other two are the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) and the Development Policy. These three aspects are often conflated, for the reason that an emphasis on Development largely affects trade policy, under the CCP, and that in turn affects the CFSP. In this way, the European Union needs to achieve cohesion between international efforts to liberalise trade and trade liberalisation between the Union and developing third countries.

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The objective of the Treaty of Rome was to create a customs union between the Member States, wherein all barriers to trade would be eliminated and a common external tariff would be applied to imports from third countries. The Common Commercial Policy was named in Article 3 of the Treaty of Rome as one of the activities of the EEC, and its main elements were set out in articles 110 to 116 EEC. Having completed a customs union among them, Member States turned to dealing with worldwide trade relations. Article 112 EEC required them to harmonise their systems of export aids and article 113 EEC identified the need for uniform principles to underpin the CCP with regard to tariff rates – a need that was satisfied with the establishment of the Common External Tariff (CET) – the conclusion of trade agreements, liberalisation measures, the promotion of exports, and instruments of commercial defence against dumping and subsidies. The role of the Commission as a negotiator on behalf of the member states is laid down in this article, under which the Council of Ministers is empowered to act by qualified majority voting.

The key objectives of the trade policy of the Union are to:i. Keep markets open,ii. Ensure fair trade,iii. Enforce trade policy legislation objectively and transparently,iv. Ensure that trade partners respect the World Trade Organisation

legislation, andv. Promote improvements to the system.108

The fundamental feature of the European customs union is the Common External Tariff. It involves applying uniform customs duties to products imported from third countries, irrespective of the Member State of destination109. Keeping markets open is a measure that helps European enterprise conduct its exports and investment policies in a manner that benefits the EU itself. In this respect, the Trade Barriers Regulation is both an offensive and defensive tool for the EU; it gives the opportunity to file a complaint with the Commission when there is reason to believe that

108 www.europa.eu.int 109 www.europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/r11000.htm

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companies are encountering difficulties (trade barriers) that restrict their access to third country markets110. Of course, in a way this contradicts the Union’s dedication to ensuring fair trade.

Fair international competition and an evenly balanced playing field for all producers on the EU market is ensured by antidumping and subsidy measures. Dumping is the most common unfair trade-distorting practice. It occurs when manufacturers from a non-EU country sell goods in the EU below the sales price in their domestic market, or below the cost of production. The most harmful reason for dumping measures is ‘predatory pricing’, wherein manufacturers accept losses at first to undercut competitors, either to boost their market share or to drive competition off the market. This is generally only possible when the export market is protected to a significant extent. Antidumping is the trade defence instrument most often used by the EU, although its impact should not be exaggerated, since antidumping measures cover only over approximately 0.5% of total European imports111. The subsidy measures taken by governments or other public authorities to help domestic enterprise, is another problem that the EU has to face. Subsidies help to reduce production costs and/or cut the prices of exports to the EU unfairly. This can help manufacturers to increase their market share in other countries and cause injury to competitors112.

However, the active involvement of the Commission in dealing with cases gives the opportunity to businesses to ensure that legislation regarding trade is properly enforced if they have evidence of material injury due to dumped or subsidised imports.

Within the framework of the Common Commercial Policy, the European Union has been engaged in agreements with various parts of the world in an interregional and bilateral external economic relationships’ context: the European Economic Area, that extends the Union’s Single Market to three

110 http://trade-info.cec.eu.int/europa/2001newround/pol.pdf 111 For more on antidumping measures see http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/policy/dumping/antidumping.htm 112 For more on Subsidy measures, see http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/policy/subsidy/antisubsidy.htm

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members of the European Free Trade Association, who are not EU members, namely Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway; the Europe Agreements, which are individual trade agreements signed with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that are candidates for EU membership, which provide these countries with asymmetric (non-reciprocal) access to the Union’s market, although problems remain in some of the sectors, such as steel, in which they might have a hope of competing; the Global Mediterranean Policy that was strengthened after the entry of Greece, Spain and Portugal in the EU, and finally the trade relationships that the Union has with the USA, Russia, Turkey, South Africa and Asia.

The EU is by far the biggest trading bloc in the world. If trade between the member states is included the Union has a 37.5% share of world trade, far outstripping the North American Free Trade Area with 18.2% and Japan with 7.1%. Both the Union and the EEA have a favourable trade balance in both goods and services with the rest of the world. Member states have substantial investments in many countries. The EU itself has trade or cooperation agreements with almost 120 countries worldwide113.

However, because of the variety of the economic performance of third countries that trade with the EU, it has been necessary to develop different agreements with them. Furthermore, EU businesses are not only confronted with competition from within the EU, but also from imports from third countries, since the EU is a largely open market. Therefore, it must, in a sense protect itself from products that might disrupt its economy and its trade relations. Consequently, the trade agreement partner and the EU agree on a mutual reduction of customs duties on imported goods from the trade agreement partner.

The trade agreements with third countries that the EU is engaged in, are based on the General System of Preferences (GSP). This includes the EU and the most industrialised countries outside it, and grants a ‘non-reciprocal’ trade preference to all developing countries. The GSP for developing 113 Bainbridge Timothy, The Penguin Companion to the European Union, Second Edition, Penguin Books Ltd., 1998

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countries is based on unilateral concessions granted by individual industrialised countries. GSP allows for duty free imports into the EU of all industrial goods from the Least Developed Countries, a measure that has been extended to all goods, except for bananas, rice and sugar, as of March 2001. For other developing countries, reductions on the customs duties are based on an evaluation of the competitiveness of an individual country, and on whether the product under import-consideration is harmful to the EU’s market114.

Additionally, the EU signed in June 2000 a trade agreement with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, which was the former Lomé Agreement. The trade agreement with the ACP countries regulates trade between the two groups of countries, and also deals with the political dimension of their relations, their development cooperation strategies and their financial cooperation. This agreement is also known as the Cotonou Agreement, which will be valid until 2020, and renewed every five years. In general, the Cotonou Agreement falls under the Development Policy of the EU, and as such it emphasises the promotion of fair trade with the ACP countries, the promotion of democracy, Human Rights, etc.

Historically, the EU has been in favour of free trade, calling for the progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade and the lowering of customs duties, as stated in Article 110 EEC. The Commission represents the member states in the trade talks conducted in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and in other bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Once the effects of the generalised system of preferences are taken into account, the Union has one of the lowest average levels of industrial tariff in the world, although this low average conceals high tariffs in certain sensitive sectors such as textiles and consumer electronics115.

114 www.fairtrade.dk 115 The Penguin Companion to the European Union, 1998

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The sectoral breakdown of the Union’s visible trade has changed little in the past few years. Surpluses in chemicals, machinery and transport equipment compensate for deficits in raw materials and energy. Other sectors are broadly in balance. Geographically, the outstanding change has been the steady growth since 1980 in the proportion of overall trade taken up by industrialised countries at the expense of developing countries (although the latter still represent one third of the total). The USA is by far the Union’s most important trading partner, followed by Japan (for imports) and Switzerland (for exports). The states of Southeast Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea) are among the fastest growing markets. However, partly as a consequence of the Single Market programme, trade between member states is growing more quickly that the trade between the EU and the rest of the world.

However, as the European Union concentrated on the handling of trade within the community borders, concern about European protectionism arose. ‘Fortress Europe’ was a phrase used to embody the fears of the EU’s principal trading partners and supporters of free trade that the Union was becoming more protectionist. Such fears were prompted in the late 1980s by the moves to complete the 1992 Single Market programme, since it appeared that some member states were prepared to see the removal of trade barriers within the Community only if it were accompanied by a strengthening of measures to control imports from non-member countries. It was thought that some member states would like to extend Community preference beyond agricultural trade to trade in manufactured goods and services. The lengthy dispute with the USA over agricultural export subsidies and the long-delayed General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) settlement gave some substance to these fears, but on the whole, in spite of recession and high unemployment, the EU has not resorted to protectionism116.

It is clear that the European Union has been committed to multilateral trade, and as such it is a strong supporter of multilateral trade rules. Therefore, the EU not only played an important role in the creation of the WTO, but also in 116 idem.

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the establishment of the WTO disputes settlement system. It is important that all parties concerned in the WTO respect trade legislation. The EU, as well as applying trade policy instruments, is also faced with a number of cases against it. The Commission plays a direct role in anti-subsidy cases where Community subsidies are involved and in all cases where imports from the whole of the EU are concerned. In addition, the Commission monitors all third country commercial defence investigations, gives advice to Member States to defend their cases, and ensures that third countries comply with their obligations. According to Mr. Dorian Prince, Head of Unit at the Directorate General for Trade, the absence of trade regulating instruments and the lack of compliance to world trade rules leads to ‘unfettered globalisation that in turn leads to greater inequality between and within countries, a lowering of standards and an adverse impact on the environment’117.

In spite of substantial national and political differences between the member states in trade policy, the EU has on the whole, achieved a high degree of coherence and consistency in trade matters. This is not to say that it has always acted wisely or even in good time, which is one of the difficulties in arriving at common positions, but in most areas member states have accepted the need to act as one. Notorious exceptions to this include the French and Italian restrictions of imports of Japanese cars, the unilateral embargo introduced by Greece on trade with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the last minute bargaining instigated by France over the GATT agreement. The Union has largely succeeded in dispelling the fears of a fortress Europe prompted by the single market programme, in spite of the recession still affecting the economies of many member states118.

Apparently, the European Union has established economic relationships throughout the world. However, these relationships have been established under the global economic influence of the United States of America, within the framework of trade liberalisation, although many trade agreements are 117 Prince, Dorian, The Challenge of Globalisation: EU Trade Policy In A Changing World, Brussels – Marketing Conference, 30/1/2002118 Dinan, Ever Closer Union?, based on the chapter on the EU’s External Relations

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with countries that were former European colonies, and can also indicate a continuation of the ties with Europe. In a sense, trade agreements with third countries have somewhat restored Europe’s colonial power, since by their very nature, those third countries have a far weaker political and economic will than do the 15 Member States of the EU together, allowing for ‘non-reciprocal’ trade agreements to be signed between them.

At present, however, the global economy has such a neo-liberal character, which forces the weaker economies to achieve a level of performance that is in reality impossible to reach, given their technological stagnation, as opposed to the technological progress of the West, for instance119. As a result, globalisation and economic globalisation in particular has obtained numerous opponents that criticise trade liberalisation as a tool of unfair economic exploitation of economically weaker countries. Accusations in this respect are directed both against the USA, a staunch and traditional supporter of neo-liberal economic policies, a support that is exemplified through the repeated refusals on the part of the USA to sign international treaties regarding the environment and human rights, such as the refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement and a more recent international treaty on the elimination of child labour120, as well as against the EU, which, without the practice of neo-liberalism would not have been the economic giant that it is considered to be121.

Of the main reasons why both the USA and the EU have been loyal to the neo-liberal paradigm, is the so-called ‘globalisation hypothesis’122. This hypothesis claims that at some point at the end of the 20th century, the global economy underwent radical changes. The quantitative aspect of these changes has been the significant increase in trade and direct investment on a national and multinational level. The qualitative aspect has been that 119 Based on Said Edward, Problems of Neo-liberalism, in Al Ahram Weekly 7 – 13 September 2000 [Issue no. 498], taken from BRC News Online, 25/9/2000 and also Mouzelis Nikos, For an Alternative Third Way – Revised Modernisation and the dead ends of the Political Thought of Anthony Giddens, Themelio Editions, Athens 2001120 BBC World Service, 12/5/2002121 Turner Adair, Whose brand of capitalism is best?, Financial Times Online (www.ft.com), 18/3/2001122 Based on Weeks, John, Globalize, Globa-lize, Global Lies: Myths of the World Economy in the 1990s, in Albritton Robert, Itoh Makoto, Westra Richard, Zuegen Alan eds., Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalizations, Palgrave, 2001

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quantitative changes have created new conditions where the only realistic economic policy would be that of trade liberalisation, free inflow of capital and fiscal and monetary correctness.

Trade liberalisation is necessary in order to achieve economic efficiency within an individual country for instance, and create benefits towards the consumers, thus ensuring the inflow of the capital necessary for progress123. John Weeks, in his article Globalise, Globa-lise, Global Lies: Myths of the World Economy in the 1990s, criticises this kind of economic policy as one based on very frail ideological grounds, since in theory, trade liberalisation leads to economic prosperity, but in practice, researches that have been carried out point out that unfettered trade liberalisation further increases the unequal distribution of wealth among countries.

Weeks continues to argue that at the end of the 20th century there was hardly any convincing evidence that the world’s economy was ever more globalised. For most countries, Foreign Direct Investment and exports remained at the same levels as had been foreseen in previous years. Furthermore, rapid economic development did not occur in the manner that was predicted; globalisation would in theory help the international transfer of technological expertise, increase innovation because of competition, create more competitive prices to the benefit of the consumer and transform national economies into more flexible and adaptable systems to external influences.

The less developed countries that applied the globalisation programme the most (Latin America, South Sahara countries) had worse economic performance in comparison to previous decades. The most successful regions since the 1960s, namely the Pacific countries, went through economic depression during the 1990s, and South Asia applied least of all the norms of globalisation. John Weeks argues that the argument that trade liberalisation will lead to greater economic development and overall prosperity is in reality unconfirmed. Globalisation at the end of the 20th century was not inevitable,

123 For a view in support of capitalism see www.ft.com (Financial Times), Hilton Steve, The Corporatist Manifesto, in Good Business by Hilton Steve and Gibbons Giles, Texere Publications, 2001

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nor is it completely irreversible124; it was probably about a whole of measures and policies that looked to the promotion of the interests of Capital neglecting the implications on the majority of the population125.

Nevertheless, Western European capitalism is undoubtedly more socially sensitive than the neo-liberal Anglo-Saxon model, and more democratic than the Asiatic one. The unification of Europe is a major prerequisite to pass – on a global level – from what has been labeled as a virulent and anarchical ‘casino-capitalism’ where enterprises seek to maximize profits at the lowest possible cost on very speculative grounds, on to a more humane and rational capitalist system. However, as Mr. Jospin – now out of power – has pointed out, no reform of procedures and institutions can succeed before the content of the political project behind them becomes clearer.

In both the political and economic spheres, the USA – a major proponent of neo-liberal economic policies – appears to have taken on a leading role. On the other hand, the European Union has largely benefited from the application of similar neo-liberal policies126. There is though at least one difference between the USA and the EU, and this is social policy, or as was indicated in previous sections, the EU’s tradition of left-wing politics. The European Union constitutes a leading social model, and a world of a capitalism based on the values defended by the EU can certainly be more humane than what the United States has to offer.

First of all, it is important to stress the fact that globalisation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon and as such it is possible to generate change within its operating system. For instance, it is possible for multinational companies to make profit without resorting to the use of child labour, given the incredible amounts of capital that they already own. Secondly, it is equally important to realise that globalisation has not offered what the

124 Mouzelis (2001) also supports this argument.125 For more on the implications of globalisation on the poorer countries see Gray John, The Decay of the Free Market, in The New Statesman 25/3/2002126 Based on Giddens Anthony, A Third Way for the European Union?, from The Future Shape of Europe, edited by Mark Leonard, 2001, taken from www.globaldimensions.net

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governments who supported it claimed it would; rapid economic development and technological progress has been achieved by those economies that were already strong and needed further expansion, which they achieved through trade liberalisation. On the other hand, the poorer economies have suffered economic depressions and a general decrease in the standard of living of their populations. Seemingly, neo-liberal economic theory has partially failed in practice. The reasoning of capital accumulation and of the social and economic contrasts cannot be infinitely sustained. The European citizens and the social movements must also play their role in the creation of an economically and politically strong EU. Through its economic and political unification, the European Union has the obligation to project a new model of economic administration and political behaviour127. In other words, the European Union needs to regulate economic globalisation in order to make it more sustainable for those countries that don’t have the economic power of others.

By common consent, globalisation as a process has its roots even in previous centuries with the expansionist trade policies of the then powerful states. The intense form that economic globalisation has acquired under the practice of trade liberalisation dates back only to the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War and the establishment of the USA as the only superpower. A collection of essays on the development of capitalism128 leads to the conclusion that globalisation at the end of the 20th century was not inevitable, but that its most dedicated supporters produced a series of ‘myths’ in order to establish the view that what was supposedly inevitable – globalisation – was also desirable. Whether economic globalisation in the form of trade liberalisation that sometimes goes beyond the respect of global human values is desirable is a very debatable statement. However, even if globalisation was not inevitable, this does not necessarily mean that it is also irreversible; it is possible to reform it in order to make it desirable.

127 Paggalos Theodoros, 2001128 Albritton R., Itoh M., Westra R., Zuegen A., eds, Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalisations, Palgrave, 2001

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Mouzelis (2001) argues that globalisation has one dimension that is irreversible – technological progress, increased interdependence, ‘compression’ of time and space through the digital revolution, etc. – and one that is reversible – the mode of controlling new technology and the adjustment of the global market system. Considering the second, reversible dimension of globalisation, it becomes clear that the neo-liberal functioning of the world market, as well as the American hegemony that supports it, has nothing that is ‘eternal’ and irreversible. The present one-polar system of global governance will be radically transformed when the European Union – and on the other hand, rapidly developing China – becomes a serious world actor, meaning a serious reformer of the global order of things.

The reactions against neo-liberal globalisation that were initiated in Seattle and continued in Genoa are, according to Mouzelis, the most important political development since the collapse of Socialism; one can see the degradation of a big portion of humankind and, what is more, millions of children starving and dying because of lack of medical care. These are the facts in a reality where the 10 richest people in the world have a higher income than tens of poor countries, and where the leaders of the 8 richest states of the world, reject any valuable offer of help or support and leave everything to the ‘wisdom’ of the global market. In Mouzelis’s view, these movements against globalisation are movements that will also act as a counterbalance to multinational capital and to the ‘myopic’ state-centrism of the political leaderships of the rich countries, provided of course that they overcome their tendency towards anarchical violence and revolutionary utopia.

Mouzelis believes that it is only a matter of time for the main trading blocs (Japan, China, USA, EU) to create a firmer structure of the global market system. He also accords significance to the role that the Left must play in this effort. Particularly the Centre-Left must have as its purpose the creation not of a humane neo-liberal economic order, but a neo-social-democratic vision: the combination, on a global scale, of productivity with social justice, ecologic responsibility and meaningful democracy. It should aim at a balance between

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productivity on the economic sector, democracy on the political sector, solidarity on the social sector and autonomy/self-actualisation on the cultural sector. Such a balance between these four values, in combination with ecological sensitivity and responsibility, is possible to be achieved within the framework of capitalism, because, ‘the limits of radical changes in this extremely flexible system are far more spread out than the pessimistic evaluations of the Left and the triumphalist proclamations of the Neo-liberal Right’129.

In conclusion, it seems that it is simple to proclaim the EU as the future reformer of the global market system and potentially of global governance. The neo-liberal paradigm that has so far been followed in global economy, received its most serious blow with the events of 11 September 2001 in the United States, where the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were hit by hi-jacked civilian aircrafts; at least the pretext behind the attacks was that they were a response to the painful experience that United States overall foreign policy has caused to the states of the developing world. This may be partially true, since the real intention of the attack has not been fully revealed. However, in contrast with the American government, the wider public and the non-American media and academic cycles seemed to have realised that indeed at some point neo-liberalism has been disadvantageous for many parts of the world, although these beliefs are often silenced by US government resolution to continue on the same path it has so far treaded. The American government continues to believe that further trade liberalisation can be the only solution to international poverty, and not for instance the reduction or the lifting of the debt of the Third World. The European Union on the other hand, seems that at present it has found much comfort in a neo-liberal economic environment and is probably unwilling to reform it. This trend may very well continue, given the developments in European politics, witnessing what seems to be a ‘rise’ of conservative powers. Nevertheless, in the European Union, where the people have demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the inconsistency of social democrats ‘adapting to a globalised world’, it may seem possible that the Centre-Left – 129 Mouzelis, 2001, p. 109

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which, as far as the EU is concerned, has played an important role in its shaping – will re-emerge with more dynamic and radical suggestions and proposals that may indicate a turning point in the European Union’s political development. However, for the moment, whether it is the United States that controls the global market system and the European Union that helps sustain it this way, it is merely a case of choosing between the lesser of two evils.

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CHAPTER IV Conclusion

The general scope of this thesis has been to firstly underline the significance of the Europeanisation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy for the global political unfolding of the EU, and secondly, to present the EU as an alternative model for a balancing force in global governance. These two arguments are very much connected to each other in the sense that one will follow as a direct consequence of the other: it is only through the supranationalisation of the CFSP that the EU can obtain the political voice that it lacks in the international arena.

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At present, we witness a situation of multi-lateral global partnerships within the framework of NATO, the WTO, UN and so forth, but in reality the leading role in these partnerships is played by the most powerful, in this case, the United States of America. By common consent however, the USA have surpassed their limits as a superpower and simply wish to continue with the creation of a world that does not hinder their national interest. Of course, the impact of such an attitude on the rest of the world has been far more negative than anticipated. The determination of the USA to stand for democracy and freedom worldwide, leads them to proceed to action that is not always welcome by the International Community, because they are actions that don’t take into account the economic, political and diplomatic complexities of foreign affairs.

The EU has so far been only an observer and/or a follower as regards international political developments, and particularly the resolution of conflicts, and has not been able to exert some kind of control over American arrogance. Moreover, the confusion that was created by European statesmen about the future of the EU – which demonstrates the lack of a clear political goal behind European Integration – has contributed to the continuation of this trend, and has also led to a seeming rise of Conservative and Right Wing political formations all around Europe. The latter constitutes a serious blow against the EU itself, and particularly against political unification, but it can also function as a learning process for the Social Democrats that lost power to the Conservatives, to re-shape Social Democracy in order to meet the needs of the 21st century.

If Social Democracy re-organises itself based on previous experience, as well as on mistakes or neglects of the past, and breaks away from deterministic trends such as the Third Way, it can present a viable political future for an EU that will behave as a progressive balancing player in global governance. The reason why so much faith is put on the EU to generate positive change in global politics, lies in the fact that most of the EU Member States have a long Left wing tradition, regardless of its current crisis, which means that there is (or, should be) a belief in progress and not conservatism. The EU itself is also

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based on Social Democratic values, which have to be redefined in order to be applicable to the EU of the 21st century. By contrast, in the USA there is little or no opposition from Left wing forces against government initiatives, and consequently, it can be foreseen that the current foreign policy line of the USA is unlikely to change in the future. The governing parties of the EU, whether they belong to the Left or the Right, are constantly confronted with the criticism of the opposition parties, which is not the case in the USA, apart from the Non Governmental Organisations that sporadically raise their manifesting voices, but to no avail. In addition, contrary to the USA that draw international legitimacy from their military might, the EU is recognised as an international actor from the economic relationships it has established with the rest of the world, within the framework of the Common Commercial Policy. Another reason why the EU can qualify as a more progressive superpower is the fact that European foreign policy, albeit in an intergovernmental fashion, has never opted for explicitly offensive use of military structures – with the exception of Great Britain – but has seemed to prefer the path of diplomacy and the use of its economic weaponry, such as the imposition of sanctions against countries that refuse to comply with international rules.

Moreover, what is essential to grasp is the fact that the USA will generally be reluctant to lose power to the EU, or even accept to be controlled as a superpower. From this perspective, and stretching this argument to its limits, the USA may well try to impede the development of a European CFSP with a concomitant military dimension, either with the expression of their reservations, or by proceeding to direct statements, or action. The potential role of the USA as a disintegrating force for the EU’s foreign policy coordination will only be eliminated if the European Union transforms itself into a politically tighter entity.

Of course, to attribute such potential to the EU, means that one has to acknowledge the fact that the Union is not a political dwarf, as so many critics believe. It needs to be clarified that this term is applied to the EU when it is being compared to the political power of the USA and in this context it

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can be true. However, the USA have such power today, because they have been building up their superpower structures for almost half a century, during the years of the Cold War, whereas the EU only started to seriously respond to global changes in the 1990s. Additionally, the political developments that took place in the 1990s as regards EU foreign policy, may not have affected the EU’s international positioning, but they have been very important for the Union itself, in the sense that there has been a gradual involvement of supranational factors in foreign policy decision-making. Therefore, labeling the EU a political dwarf is a generalisation that does not consider the complex nature of politics at the European level.

Summing up, I tried to demonstrate that should the EU develop into a superpower, for which the first step will be to Europeanise foreign policy, it will constitute a model of a superpower with a more spherical approach to the world, contrary to America that accords absolute significance to its military might. The European Union can become a ‘superpower’ with a rational military and foreign policy dimension, an economic dimension and also with a social dimension that is missing in the United States of America. However, to achieve this, the European Union has to break from the political dead-ends that it is presently confronted with.

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