ABSTRACT
When fighting broke out in Yugoslavia in the summer of 1991 the leaders of the European Union (EU) made no secret of their ambition to intervene as mediators in the Yugoslav crisis. The West European Union (WEU), which is projected as the future military arm of the EU, has proved irrelevant in the crisis in former Yugoslavia. The inability of the EU and the WEU to cope successfully with the crisis in former Yugoslavia has revealed a fundamental weakness of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), namely the lack of a military capability to support its foreign policy. The first French attempt to set up an integrated European army was triggered by an American demand during the Korean War in 1950 for a West German contribution to NATO. Thus, the decision to create the Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTF) could be the beginning of the setting up of a real European defence capability.
