National Adaptation and Survival in a Changing European Diplomacy

Abstract

Cooperation within the EU on foreign affairs has always been ambiguous. Indeed, since the days of European Political Cooperation (EPC), EU foreign policy has been ‘less than supranational but more than intergovernmental’ (Ohrgaard, 1997), and successive treaties have never unpacked this ambiguity. Yet, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) was intended to enable the EU to address the post-Cold War internal (economic governance through Monetary Union) and external (enlargement and a common foreign policy towards the Balkans) challenges. It created the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), an intergovernmental mechanism for cooperation. In 1999 the Amsterdam Treaty flanked CFSP with the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and created a titular head of the new processes: the High Representative (HR). Paradoxically, all these developments, including the Nice Treaty, which put flesh on the bones of the emerging new system of foreign policy coordination, reinforced the dualism between the intergovernmental mode of cooperation in traditional core issues of diplomacy and supranational management of certain fields of EU external relations; notably trade, aid, enlargement and humanitarian aid, by the European Commission.