The Europeanisation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Allen, David and Oliver, Tim. (2004) The Europeanisation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In: UNSPECIFIED, Sheffield, UK.

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Abstract

[Introduction]. This paper will begin by examining the history of the FCO reflecting upon its interactions with European integration, highlighting that this has been only one of several key challenges for the FCO over the last 60 years. The paper will then move onto explore the setup of the FCO and how it operates today. The current structure of the FCO reflects a cumulative adjustment to change over a considerable period of time, although the pace of this change has quickened since Britain became a member of the EU. As the government department responsible for Britain’s external relations it has invested considerable resources and energy into Britain’s relations with its European partners, although this has not always been to good affect. Its position within Whitehall and British government has been both enhanced and challenged by European integration. Indeed, as we will show, for the FCO European integration is something from which it has neither gained nor lost. This in turn returns us to the key difficulty of the wide variety of pressures to which the FCO has been subject, which we explore in some detail. These include international issues and domestic challenges such as constitutional reform, societal changes, new trends in management and institutional structuring, and the style of leadership adopted by Foreign Secretaries and Prime Ministers, the latter of which will be discussed towards the end of the paper.

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