The External Dimension of the EU’s Non-proliferation Policy: Overcoming Inter-institutional Competition

Abstract

For many years, the EU's policy on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) has been a victim of institutional fragmentation, imbedded in the post-Maastricht formal separation of the European Community from the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). On the one hand, since the beginning of the 1990s, the European Commission was developing capacity-building projects on non-proliferation and nuclear safety, utilizing its geographical and thematic financial instruments. On the other hand, more recently, permanent bureaucratic structures entrusted with implementing the EU's WMD Strategy were established in the Council General Secretariat. This posed a challenge to the consistency of the EU's non-proliferation efforts and even triggered inter-institutional competition over limited resources. The European External Action Service (EEAS) offers an opportunity to solve these problems by bringing selected bureaucracies from the Commission and Council General Secretariat together. Will it be sufficient to develop a consistent policy on the non-proliferation of WMDs for the EU? This article analyses structural problems that have been negatively affecting the EU's profile as an actor in non-proliferation policy. Further, it evaluates prospects for enhancing this profile following the institutional reforms introduced by the Lisbon Treaty.