Search results

The radical changes taking place in the international scene during the late 1980s have presented the European Communities with important new challenges. The twelve Member States agreed that the only way to respond effectively to this new situation was to speed up the European integration process, and in December 1990 two Intergovernmental Conferences were inaugurated, focusing respectively on the development of an Economic and Monetary Union and a Political Union. It was the difficult task of the Luxembourg and Dutch Presidencies to channel the often very diverging positions of the different actors in the process into one coherent set of amendments to the Treaties forming the European Communities. This publication examines the positions which the different Member States, the Commission and the European Parliament have been defending in the Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union and more particularly with regard to one of the most sensitive topics under discussion, namely the development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The introduction places the debate on the development of a Political Union and a CFSP in an historical perspective and gives an overview of the progression of the negotiations. The concluding chapter presents a general framework for better understanding of the course and results of the negotiations, and a critical evaluation of the outcome. The annexes reproduce the main proposals on the development of a CFSP submitted to the Conference

"The Maastricht Treaty: Creating the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

"The Common Foreign and Security Policy" published on by Oxford University Press.

In an important article on the state of European Union (EU) foreign policy research, Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire show that academics excessively focus on the study of the EU foreign policy system and EU implementation rather than the consequences of EU foreign policy for recipient countries. While the article is empirical, based on a dataset of 451 published articles on EU foreign policy, the normative message is that it is time to stop 'navel-gazing' and pay more attention to those on the receiving end of EU foreign policy. We welcome this contribution, but wonder why certain research questions have been privileged over others. We argue that this has primarily to do with the predominant puzzles of the time. We also invite Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire to make a theoretical case for a research agenda with more attention to outside-in approaches. We conclude by briefly reflecting on future research agendas in EU foreign policy.

In an important article on the state of European Union (EU) foreign policy research, Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire show that academics excessively focus on the study of the EU foreign policy system and EU implementation rather than the consequences of EU foreign policy for recipient countries. While the article is empirical, based on a dataset of 451 published articles on EU foreign policy, the normative message is that it is time to stop 'navel-gazing' and pay more attention to those on the receiving end of EU foreign policy. We welcome this contribution, but wonder why certain research questions have been privileged over others. We argue that this has primarily to do with the predominant puzzles of the time. We also invite Keuleers, Fonck and Keukeleire to make a theoretical case for a research agenda with more attention to outside-in approaches. We conclude by briefly reflecting on future research agendas in EU foreign policy.

The article joins the discussion on the resistance to norms in Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) by focusing on the European External Action Service (EEAS). It begins by defining the norms that are associated with the EEAS as: (1) close cooperation by the Member States with the EEAS, (2) sharing information and (3) abstaining from influencing staff of one's own nationality and Seconded National Experts (SNEs) along one's own national interests. Then, the authors continue by analysing the types of resistance and explaining why the Member States choose to resist the norms related to the organization they had previously created with a unanimous decision. The article concludes that even if soft rules may at first seem to be less costly than hard laws, their less constraining nature does not automatically imply less resistance. All three types of instruments identified by Saurugger and Terpan in the introduction1 have been used for resistance with information and communication being the most commonly employed. Cognitive distance between the European and national level seem to have stronger explanatory value than the financial and social resources of Member States.

Abstract not available. Adapted from the source document.

The article joins the discussion on the resistance to norms in Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) by focusing on the European External Action Service (EEAS). It begins by defining the norms that are associated with the EEAS as: (1) close cooperation by the Member States with the EEAS, (2) sharing information and (3) abstaining from influencing staff of one's own nationality and Seconded National Experts (SNEs) along one's own national interests. Then, the authors continue by analysing the types of resistance and explaining why the Member States choose to resist the norms related to the organization they had previously created with a unanimous decision. The article concludes that even if soft rules may at first seem to be less costly than hard laws, their less constraining nature does not automatically imply less resistance. All three types of instruments identified by Saurugger and Terpan in the introduction have been used for resistance with information and communication being the most commonly employed. Cognitive distance between the European and national level seem to have stronger explanatory value than the financial and social resources of Member States. Adapted from the source document.