The European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy Conundrum

Defining a common foreign and security policy (CFSP) for the European Union (EU) is one of the hardest tasks the Member States are and will be facing. The problems are obvious. First, there is a sheer logistical concern: how do you get the foreign services of 15 Member States to co-operate with each other effectively? Secondly, there is an institutional problem: where is CFSP going to be ‘made’, and who will be responsible for implementing any decisions — the Western European Union (WEU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), or the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE)? Thirdly, there is the problem of defining what ‘security’ means in the second half of the 1990s and what should be placed under the general rubric of ‘foreign policy’ — is security simply a question of national security/defence, or does it involve such issues as the protection of the environment and the regulation of immigration from non-member countries? Lastly, how does one find a common thread to unite the historically divergent members of the EU, some of which have been allied with each other as members of NATO, others that remained neutral throughout the Cold War. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.