Assessing the influence of France and Germany on EU foreign and security policy

Abstract

This article assesses the influence of the Franco-German partnership on the development of an EU foreign and security policy since the 1990s, in order to see whether political cohesion between the two member states is a necessary and sufficient condition for the EU to emerge as an actor in the international arena. Based on a methodology using secondary literature in a systematic way, the argument unfolds in three parts: first, the article looks at the political cohesion between the two member states in terms of both the building and the content of the EU’s foreign and security policy. Then, it seeks to establish a correlation between Franco-German cohesion and the existence of an EU position, or lack thereof. Finally, the last section explains why the Franco-German cohesion is a necessary but insufficient condition for the EU to gain actorness, by looking at other variables pertaining to: domestic politics, European politics and the international environment. Four models of interaction between the Franco-German cohesion and these other variables are developed: effective consensus; ineffective consensus; diffuse consensus; blocking dissensus.