The Linchpin COPS: Assessing the workings and institutional relations of the Political and Security Committee. EIPA Working Paper 05/W/2005

Duke, Simon. (2005) The Linchpin COPS: Assessing the workings and institutional relations of the Political and Security Committee. EIPA Working Paper 05/W/2005 .

Abstract

[Introduction]. The object of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the role and institutional relations of the Political and Security Committee or, as it is also know, COPS.1 It is also a modest response to a gap in the published literature dealing with the higher committees in the EU; although the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) is well covered, the same is not true of the Article 36 committee in Justice and Home Affairs, the Economic and Financial Committee in the EMU area and, in the case of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, COPS.2 More generally the discussions surrounding the Convention on the Future of Europe and the subsequent constitutional treaty have also tended to focus on the top structures, most notably the roles of the High Representative for CFSP and the Commissioner for External Relations, perhaps to the detriment of a broader examination of how the EU’s external relations work. The significance of this study is hopefully also to be found in the growing importance and influence of many of these higher committees and, hence, our need to understand them more clearly. This applies with particular force to the COPS who, in spite of only being established in December 1999 at the Helsinki European Council, is portrayed as the ‘linchpin’ of the Union’s crisis management efforts. The importance of this body is further underlined when one considers the rapid growth in the EU’s crisis management operations (three alone in 2003) and the probable demand for more ambitious operations in the future.