What progress has the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union since its establishment in 1993 with the Maastricht Treaty? Especially, how to draw perspectives for Europe to act fully as an international actor? What critics make? To get a more precise idea on these issues, reading the analysis and proposals Joachim Bitterlich, former diplomatic adviser to Chancellor Helmut Kohl can be very instructive.
Bitterlich said that if the Maastricht Treaty institutionalized the CFSP as the second of three "pillars" that constituted the structure of the European Union until 2009, it is the Council European Cologne in 1999 which paved the way for better development - ie the political will of member governments that institutions themselves. Indeed, the mode of operation of the CFSP has remained in sixteen years strictly intergovernmental and non-Community (therefore not subject to supranational institutions).
To overcome this relative institutional unfulfilled, the Treaty of Nice in 2001 launched as a key component of the new ESDP Security Policy and Defence Policy (ESDP) as the legal framework of EU interventions abroad . If
is objectionable in many ways, ESDP has allowed the EU to develop some experience, interventions abroad : the EUFOR mission in Chad, U.S. PT Kosovo, EUFOR RD EUPOL Kinshasa and the ARTEMIS Congo, EUJUST THEMIS to Georgia, have been completed. The EU is still active on its own continent (Georgia, Moldova, Bosnia) as in Africa (Somalia, Guinea Bissau, Congo) or the Middle East (Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq) through the ESDP.
But Europe now can not be satisfied with this experience but must go further . Progress has been significant recent years, but the Lisbon Treaty, which would definitely have given the EU diplomatic capacity and increased fixed, is very disappointing as incomplete.
Indeed, the Lisbon text created functions EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy , whose first priority is the establishment of a European External Action called "diplomatic service of the Union". The Heads of State and Government of the EU have made the choice for this position ... unexpected Britain's Catherine Ashton, a former trade commissioner assuming fully its inexperience in diplomatic affairs.
It should therefore implement this unified European diplomatic service without either authority or influence or legitimacy member states. Secondly, such a service - which is a tool for implementing a policy - of course requires some harmonization of foreign policies, at least one substantive political agreement on the objectives and means of strategy International Union. However, those are the big EU states such as France in the lead, Germany and Great Britain, with their geopolitical so different, that remain in the maneuver.
" When looking more closely at the practice of European politics in the face of major partners or major international problems, it is rather evidence of a mixture of fundamental disagreements and agreements weak and superficial, even a preference for bilateral relations rather than the common approaches "writes Joachim Bitterlich.
Finally, Europe has made little progress on the diplomatic front since the Iraq crisis in 2003 when she was torn between supporters and opponents of the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. She has paid dearly recently, with a heavy responsibility for the failure of the Copenhagen Summit: EU, presented as a leader on climate issues, has been marginalized in the negotiations, lack of consistency and efficiency. It is therefore the United States and China have the most broadly defined the essence of the final package, with minima of course.
year 2010, which represented a test for new diplomatic structures of the EU has thus opened a tremendous missed . Europe has still not harmonized the positions of its member states towards Russia as strategic partners (France, for example by being traditionally closer than all other European countries), China (relations France / Germany and China / China are radically different) or even the United States, and even less on hot spots such as the Middle East.
The former diplomatic advisor to Helmut Kohl estimated that " if Europeans fail to act together, united not only on the lowest common denominator, they will not be sufficiently credible . But the best way to produce this consensus, so that European foreign policy remains the deepening and strengthening the institutions of their legitimacy.
Political practice Lisbon Treaty and the appointment of Catherine Ashton as High Representative show that Europe has not yet taken the path.
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