European Union -Common Foreign and Security Policy

The following pages aim to provide a comprehensive basic guide to the European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), its historical development and comparisons with the US. The idea of a CFSP was not mentioned in the founding Treaty of Rome. Indeed, a military dimension to the EC was explicitly ruled out by the Treaty. However, the idea was never entirely absent from discussions around the future of the European project, and, as the Timeline indicates, small steps in the direction of a CFSP have been taken from the late 1960s onwards (see European Political and Military Cooperation in the Post-War Period - A Time line).

There is some irony in the fact that the European project has lacked a foreign and defense policy dimension. Security considerations are widely recognized as having been the principal driving force in the creation of the European Community. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) of the 1950s, the first step in what has become the European project, was designed to guarantee a lasting Franco-German peace by making war not only unimaginable but also impractical due to interdependence. Even today, the eastern enlargement of the EU is driven in part by concerns for the maintenance of order and security in Eastern Europe (see European Union - Enlargement).

A European foreign policy, defense policy and defense structure has emerged over the years through a slow process of incremental development of European institutions. Of particular significance are the Western European Union (WEU), European Political Cooperation (EPC), Eurocorps and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) (see The Institutions and their development and The CFSP - What is it ?). Yet, there are still major hurdles and barriers to be overcome before the EU will truly have a single foreign policy, defense policy and defense structure (see Hurdles and Barriers).

Indeed, while a cursory comparison of the size of the US military capabilities with the size of the military in the combined EU member states does not appear to reveal a huge gulf (see Military capability - the US and the EU members compared), a comparison of US and EU foreign and defense policy decision-making processes does reveal a huge difference in their relative potential for rapid, decisive action (see Foreign policy decision-making - the US and the EU compared). Until that decision-making process is simplified, streamlined and centralized the EU is unlikely to be a global actor with an influence comparable to that of the US. Nevertheless, while there are immense hurdles to be overcome, by laying the institutional basis for a EU foreign and defense policy, the CFSP does constitute a significant and important step in this direction.