Europos Sąjungos bendrosios užsienio ir saugumo politikos formavimas: politinės valios argumentas kaip nacionalinių interesų priedanga ; The formation of the eu common foreign and security policy: the notion of political willas a cover for national interests

Abstract

Incapability of the EU to act unanimously in the field of foreign and security policy and efficiently participate in resolution of international issues is very often justified by insufficient political will of the EU member states. Non-existence of the image of EU as international player raises issues concerned with capability of this organization to be a subject of international law, raises doubts as for its reliability as much as it concerns other players of international relations. Political will should be understood as a degree of determination of political leaders to seek for and put into practice a certain type of policy. However, when lack of political will is used to justify inaction, the reasons for that lie much deeper. The problem considered in this paper sounds as follows: although the EU member-states declare particular goals of foreign policy, however they do not take any measures to implement them while justifying themselves by lack of political will or determination. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what the argument of political will means in the context of EU foreign and security policy, what circumstances it is used at and what could be possible interpretations of it. It is asserted that the lack of political will in the EU foreign and security policy conceals the differences of member states' national interests that cause the lack of political will of entire EU as well as create a gap between the goals declared in the CFSP and actual decisions. Evolution of the CFSP and survey of existing situation as well as analysis of internal processes helps to perceive the way how foreign and security policy is formed in the second pillar, what role is attributed to appropriate institutions and who has a decisive vote while making final decisions. Neorealism theory of international relations was used as a background. In Part 2 of the paper there was analysed the concept of political will and its possible interpretations. While seeking to highlight how widely this term was used, here were submitted the quotations of the officials responsible for the EU foreign policy as well as political leaders of EU member states and academicians. Possible meanings of political will also were submitted and finally it was attempted to deconstruct the argument while singling out the most important factors. In Part 3, particular cases of unsuccessful policy of the EU in regard to third parties were analysed. The argument of political will is rather often heard while assessing and surveying the implementations of the EU goals in Africa, therefore for the investigation the samples of relationship between EU and Morocco and Zimbabwe were selected. Intergovernmental principle of CFSP operation, unanimous decision-making and reluctance of lodging more powers into hands of institutions reveals that member states are the main players in this field. Wide context of the usage of political will as a term and complexity of determination of this concept induces to treat this term as a screen to cover other reasons and incites searching what is concealed under it. The hypothesis raised at the beginning of the paper was confirmed. The samples considered obviously revealed discrepancies of the national interests of the EU member states. Different attitudes of the EU countries cause inactivity of entire European Union meanwhile the failures in foreign policy are named as the lack of political will.