Constitutionalization of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union: Implications of the Constitutional Treaty

Abstract

Many scholars of European integration have treated the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as a specific area of the EU. This is due to the fact that CFSP, and before it the European Political Cooperation (which was a nucleus of CFSP), have remained primarily an intergovernmental framework, although other EC pillars evolved to a much higher supranational degree over the years. For some theorists of European integration it was a clear sign that foreign and security policy would always remain the realm of national governments, which occasionally were willing to coordinate their national interests. According to the old dictum of Stanley Hoffmann, this area of state activity belongs to so-called “high politics,” meaning that advanced integration in this field, in the sense of a creation of supranational institutions, will never materialize. This train of thought, called neo-realism in the discipline of International Relations, regards foreign policy as a highly controversial area guarded by national governments. This is so because foreign policy is essential to the survival of states and their citizens. It is also claimed that sovereign foreign policy is crucial for democracy, since civil and political rights can only be safeguarded by nation-states. Thus, national governments regard the issues of foreign and security policy in terms of relative gains, that is, states define the utility of political decisions with regard to gains of other states (other states should not be allowed to gain more from cooperative arrangements than oneself because they may abuse their lead).