ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the central question of willingness of the European Union (EU) member-states to engage in a common foreign policy making, which deals with the dimension of voluntarism in the European integration process. It addresses the question of the specific nature of the foreign policy-making process in the EU, of which the two-layer structure and the intergovernmental bargaining are the essential features. European integration in the area of foreign policy has always been part of the extensive process of European integration. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the formal title for European Political Cooperation (EPC) in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) agreed in Maastricht in 1991, maintains its distinguished intergovernmental character. The notion of a decision regime is borrowed from Kegley who has employed the concept of regime in the comparative study of foreign policy. In essence, decision regimes are composed of cognitive beliefs of decision makers emerging, according to Kegley, from an ongoing political process.
