ABSTRACT
European integration began with defence. However, past attempts in the history of the European integration process to coordinate the sovereignty-sensitive issues of common foreign, security and defence policy between Member States had failed or ended in stagnation. With the end of the Cold War, European Union (EU) economic and political integration took on unprecedented speed, and even integration in the realm of foreign, security and defence policy became possible. From the early 1990s on, extreme humanitarian crisis situations and civil wars challenged the EU and its Member States to respond. Some of these conflicts took place in the immediate neighbourhood of the EU. Ethnic tensions caused the dissolution of multi-ethic states such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR) and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in Europe's 'backyard'.
