"Common Foreign and Security Policy: Can History be Overcome?"

Vanhoonacker, Sophie (1997) "Common Foreign and Security Policy: Can History be Overcome?". In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 1997 (5th), May 29-June 1, 1997, pages 16, Seattle, WA.

Abstract

The following article will examine some of the principal organisational and institutional problems thwarting CFSP and look at how the IGC might address them. Four major themes have been selected for a more detailed analysis: the question of introducing Qualified Majority Voting; the issue of consistency among the pillars; the legitimacy of CFSP; and the relationship of the EU with the Western European Union. Throughout the history of European integration, foreign policy cooperation, going to the very core of the sovereignty of a nation, has always been a very slow and strenuous process. After the failure of the European Defence Community in the 1950s and the Fouchet negotiations in the 1960s, it only developed from 1970 onwards in the framework of European Political Cooperation (EPC). EPC developed outside the Community framework on a purely intergovernmental basis and it was only with the adoption of the Single European Act that it received a treaty basis.