ABSTRACT
After a short period of contentious discussions within the Council, the Commission launched a legal action against the Council in 2005 to annul a CFSP instrument against the proliferation of small arms and light weapons in West Africa (Council 2004f). The Commission argued that the Council Decision should be replaced by a Community instrument in the framework of the Community’s development cooperation policy. Member State representatives in the Council along with its Legal Service perceived it to be beyond discussion that this was a clear-cut CFSP measure.1 In the words of one respondent in the Council Legal Service, ‘if SALW isn’t about security, what is?!’2
