ABSTRACT

In retrospect it seems precipitate of the framers of the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty or TEU) to have declared in Article J that "a common foreign and security policy is hereby established". The existence of such a policy - generally referred to as the CFSP - as a separate pillar indicates that the member states of the European Community (EC) were not able to agree, in 1991, to integrate European Political Cooperation (EPC), their wellestablished intergovernmental procedure for coordinating national foreign policies, into the formal law-making procedures of the Community. Those states that would have liked to have gone further down the road of legally based supranational integration, involving lawmaking procedures and the taking of qualified majority votes, reluctantly accepted the Maastricht compromise arrangements, but only on the condition that they be reviewed five years later at another intergovernmental conference (IGC). However, neither at Amsterdam in 1997 nor at Nice in 2000 were the member states' governments prepared to overturn the "intergovernmental" basis of the CFSP, although, as we shall see, they were prepared to allow the European foreign policy process to become more and more centred on Brussels, rather than on national capitals.