After Maastricht and Amsterdam: A Common European Foreign Policy?

Abstract

This is the first of two chapters that attempt to draw different conclusions from this study. More theoretical conclusions about the consequences for FPA of applying an FPA approach to the study of European foreign policy will be drawn in the next chapter, but the focus here is on European foreign policy itself. What is the status of European foreign policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century? The two EU treaties in the 1990s were intended inter alia to improve consistency between and coordination of Community and Union foreign policy. Given also the extensive Europeanization of national foreign policy systems, have our three sub-systems of policy activity now become so interwoven that we can refer to a ‘common’ or even a ‘single’ European foreign policy? If not, what problems remain and what are the future prospects?