ABSTRACT
As the Cold War drew to a close, it became increasingly clear that a new era of international politics was dawning. The emergent international system featured the disintegration of the Soviet empire, thereby emancipating many peoples from foreign rule; it also signaled the coming of age of the European Union (EU). Being for years under the protective umbrella of one of the two rival superpowers, the EU was called at short notice to shoulder a wide range of responsibilities and to perform the role of a superpower in the making. Against this background the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) that emerged from the Maastricht Summit selected the Yugoslav crisis as one of its first foreign policy tests.1
