Conclusions

The European rescue of national foreign policy?1

David Allen

The period of EU foreign policy cooperation surveyed in this volume has

been marked by two key turning-points. By Christmas of 1990 the Cold War
system in Europe had clearly come to an end with the agreed withdrawal of
the Soviet Union from Eastern and Central Europe, the collapse of communism
and the peaceful reunification of Germany. The short-term perception that
the global order, within which the European system was located, would in
future be determined by a form of bipolar cooperation between two market-
oriented, democratic superpowers was confounded at the end of 1991 when
the Soviet Union ceased to exist, leaving the USA as the predominant, if not
hegemonial, power in the international system. The second turning-point was
related to the first and involved the negotiation and eventual ratification of
the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (TEU). At the end of 1993, when
the TEU came into effect, the system of European Political Cooperation that
had existed since 1970, formally came to an end and was replaced by the
Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP—the so-called second pillar of
the European Union).

CONTI NUITY IN AN ERA OF CHANGE

Inevitably, many of the chapters in this book are dominated by the reactions of
the member states of the European Union to, and participation in, these two
significant events, and by subsequent and possible future developments in EU
foreign policy cooperation in what has become known as the ‘new Europe’. In
fact, of course, the individual chapters, in their examination of developments in
the 1980s, also serve to illustrate a considerable continuity of behaviour from
the Cold War to the post-Cold War period and from EPC to the CFSP.
Throughout the 1980s the question of security cooperation within the EPC
framework was increasingly on the agenda. There was a growing concern about
the ‘consistency’ of the EC’s external political and economic activities, which
was inextricably intertwined with an ongoing debate about the role of foreign
policy cooperation in the evolution of the European Union. There were signs
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of a growing tension between the interests and behaviour of the larger and
smaller member states and there were clear indications of a changing relationship
between the West European states and both superpowers well before the
dramatic systemic changes at the end of the decade.
However, the preceding chapters also suggest that during the 1980s and
up until the end of the Cold War system, the member states had reached a
new plateau of cooperation in the foreign policy sphere, in which the gradual
convergence of their national foreign policies had led to the development of
a growing West European identity in the international system, of a different
order to that which had emerged in the 1970s. In mid-decade they had managed
to consolidate many of their achievements in Title III of the Single European
Act, in which EPC was given a treaty base for the first time, in which the role
of the Commission (and the European Parliament) in EPC was given formal
legal recognition and in which provision was made for the establishment of a
small EPC secretariat, based permanently in Brussels and designed to assist
the rotating Presidency in the management of EPC business as well as in its
coordination with the external economic activities of the European
Community.
Furthermore our volume records the successful incorporation during the
1980s, despite a sticky start for Greece, of three new member states into the
EPC process. The Twelve, no less than the Nine and then the Ten appeared in
the 1980s to have further consolidated a system of foreign policy cooperation
which sought to preserve the treasured principle of sovereignty in an area
central to the independent life of the member states, while at the same time
enabling them, as all the chapters record, to benefit from the advantages of
mutual consultation, support and coordinated diplomatic action. In participating
in a system which enabled them to preserve, and in some cases extend, national
foreign policies and national diplomatic services while enjoying the collective
economic and political advantages of Community membership, the member
states, both large and small, appeared to have created a happy situation whereby
they were able, in terms of sovereignty and integration, both to ‘have their
cake and eat it’.
The problem arose from the fact that their decision to distinguish between
the political, economic and security aspects of their collective external behaviour
and between intergovernmental and supranational methods of policy-making,
while continuing to maintain individual national stances on most of these issues
(except of course those, like trade and some aspects of development aid where
the treaties gave the Community exclusive competence), meant that they
presented a confusing and often incoherent face to the outside world. There is
little evidence in any of the preceding chapters, other than, as one might expect,
in that which deals with the European Commission, that this external incoherence,
which many associated with an inability to convert potential into actual leadership
and influence in the international system, was much of a cause for concern for
any of the member states. There is, thus, no evidence that any of the member
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states of the then Community saw any real net advantage to be gained from
further subsuming their separate identities into a collective whole. They were
not dissatisfied generally with the actual output of EPC which was seen by
most as an important addition to, but not a replacement for, a national foreign
policy competence based on a national determination of interest. Indeed EPC
can be seen, in Milward’s terms, as the means by which member states made
their positions less rather than more vulnerable.
Apart from the Commission, which had no constituency of its own, having
been appointed by the member states (although the European Parliament
could dismiss it!), there is little evidence that the European identity that began
to emerge in the 1980s was based on any particularly strong notion of an
identifiable European interest. Instead what emerged was a series of
declarations and actions which represented a balance of nationally defined
interests—albeit a balance which on occasions represented the median rather
than a lowest common denominator position. Where member states had
strong individual interests which were either of little concern to the other
members or were irreconcilable with the collective interest, then our
contributors demonstrate that EPC presented no real barriers. There were,
however, those states like the Benelux, Spain and West Germany, who saw
enhanced foreign policy cooperation as a significant contribution to the general
development of the European integration to which they were committed. To
the extent that they argued for a reduction in intergovernmentalism and the
incorporation of EPC into the Rome Treaty procedures, including the use of
majority voting, as well as for a greater involvement of the Commission and
the European Parliament (and perhaps ideally even the European Court)
they were anxious to enhance and develop integration along ‘federal’ lines as
much as they were motivated by concerns about the efficiency or the output
of the EPC process. Ironically it was the states, like Britain and France, that
were most anxious to preserve the separate intergovernmental status of EPC,
which found themselves arguing for and conceding reforms, such as those
contained within the London Report or the Single European Act, so as to
improve the actual performance of the collective foreign policy procedures.
The principles behind the overall development of the European experiment
and the practical development of foreign policy cooperation have been difficult
to disentangle ever since the Fouchet proposals of the early 1960s (which
while ostensibly focusing on foreign policy were in fact designed to undermine
supranationality and the growing influence of the European Commission)
and our contributors demonstrate that the 1980s were no exception to this
general rule.
In retrospect many would say that the West Europeans within the European
Community were able successfully to operate the system of EPC in the manner
suggested above, because of the nature of the Cold War system.2 This meant
that the ultimate responsibility for the orderly manage-ment of European
international relations lay with the two superpowers, regardless of whether
 Conclusions 291

they were in combative or cooperative mode. Indeed at the time American

observers, most especially Henry Kissinger (both in and out of office), tended
to lay the charge that EPC was a complex, ineffective and rather luxurious
system that reflected the ‘free-riding’ nature of the collective West European
role in the international system.

DRIFTING APART?

It is worth looking in more detail at the impact of the end of the Cold War
system on the individual and collective foreign policy activities of the EU
member states. On the one hand many realists have argued that the end of
the Cold War system would probably also lead to the end of the institutions,
including the EC and EPC, which were associated with it. They see the
cooperation that underpinned the institutions created during the Cold War
as essentially transitory and anticipate that, freed from their mutual security
concerns by the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the larger member states
of the EU will revert to the unilateral pursuit of national interests determined
by calculations of relative power. Others, the liberal institutionalists, for
instance, would argue that institutions do not just reflect the short-term power
calculations and balances of otherwise competing sovereign states but are
indicative of, and an autonomous influence on, a system of international
relations in which some of the participating states find continuous advantage
in a formalized process of cooperation such as the EU and EPC.3 For those
who reject the pessimism of the realist view, and that would have to include
most of the contributors to this volume, the change in the structure of the
international system, marked by the end of the Cold War, presents significant
opportunities, as well as challenges, for the system of foreign policy cooperation
that has developed in Western Europe.
While the Warsaw Pact and Comecon confirmed the realist predictions by
disappearing almost overnight, and while NATO’s raison d’être is clearly
fundamentally challenged by the structural changes in the system, many believed
that the European Community’s hour had come with the end of the Cold War.
To begin with there were hopes that the end of the superpower confrontation
would lead to a lifting of constraints on the evolution of the Community as an
international actor and that in the new system the EC would be able to both
‘widen’ and ‘deepen’. The end of the Cold War challenged the neutrality of states
like Sweden, Austria and Finland which had been seen as an insuperable barrier
to them entering the Community and thus participating in EPC. Similarly the
end of communism and moves towards both democracy and a market economy
meant that the states of Eastern and Central Europe might now also be eligible
for membership of the EU and thus of EPC. The changing nature of the security
structure in Europe meant that, in the foreign policy sphere, collective
considerations of the defence, as well as the political and economic, aspects of
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security became both a possibility and a probable necessity for the member
states of the European Community, a development reflected in all the chapters
of this book.
Although our contributors can be predominately classified as
‘institutionalists’, in that they mostly reflect the member states’ optimism
about the continuing relevance and practicality of the European Community
and EPC, their analyses also suggest that the unbridled optimism that
characterized the immediate post-Cold War period may have been relevant
only in the short term. While it is clear that none of the present member
states consider the EU and its foreign policy aspirations to be an irrelevance
in the new environment, they are all anxious to maintain the cooperation
that has been achieved and that some are keen to advance it further, whether
intergovernmentally or supranationally, it is also clear that there has been a
certain amount of drifting apart from one another in their national foreign
policies. Some of the ‘glue’ that bound the member states together during the
Cold War and which meant that they were always inclined to seek a compromise
of their positions when faced with the hostility of the Soviet Union or even
the rivalry of the USA, has been diminished by the end of the superpower
confrontation. In short, when the major powers and, to a much lesser extent,
the smaller powers of the EU consider their national positions in the new
European system they increasingly find themselves viewing the situation
differently.
It is not clear at this point of time, nor will it be in the immediate future,
whether this drifting apart represents a steady and unidirectional divergence
of perceptions and actions or whether the EU member states are merely
enjoying more freedom to move both away from and back to one another. To
use the monetary analogy it is as if the individual states have gone from a
system of relatively fixed exchange rates (foreign policy relationships) to one
where they are now floating freely. The question remains as to whether we
will continue to see fluctuating divergence within certain limits (the foreign
policy equivalent of the monetary snake) or whether, in the foreign policy
sector, some of the differences are likely to become permanent and entrenched.
Thus while Spain clearly has a stated interest in the advancement of Western
European Union at the expense of NATO, Denmark would appear to be in
the opposite situation with a clear preference for the maintenance of the
NATO security structures and the minimization of WEU activity. Similarly,
after sharing much the same views about developments in Yugoslavia during
the Cold War, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and, of course, Greece,
found themselves taking up strikingly different positions both at the inception
of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and subsequently. The scars inflicted
may last for some time.
More significantly, it is clear that Britain, France and Germany have
fundamentally differing views (with the smaller states equally but less significantly
divided) about the desirability of enlargement of the EU to the East and the
 Conclusions 293

deepening of the Union as it is presently constituted as well as about the

relationship between widening and deepening. This is inherently a matter of
foreign policy. The British seem to believe (most vociferously during Mrs
Thatcher’s premiership) that any enlargement is attractive because it will lead
to a weakening of the Union’s supranational elements and federal ambitions.
The British calculation has always been a quantitative one, based on the erroneous
assumption (to date at any rate) that the achievements of the Community—the
‘acquis communautaire’—could not be stretched to include new members without
being watered down On the other hand it would also seem to be the British
belief that the achievements of EPC/CFSP—the ‘acquis politique’—which are
valued by Britain—are infinitely stretchable to include as many states as wish to
participate.
The French have always shared the British view of the relationship between
widening and deepening but have tended to come to the opposite conclusion
about the attractiveness of further enlargement to Eastern and Central Europe.
This, however brings the French into conflict with Germany for the Germans
have never accepted the notion that wider means weaker and have instead
tended to perceive the question of enlargement towards the East as both essential
and as a welcome stimulus towards deepening the present Union.

THE INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION

Many of the chapters here focus attention on the institutional aspects of the
relationship between the member states within E PC and the CFSP. In
particular the role of the Presidency of the Council features strongly in the
perceptions of the smaller states and much concern has been voiced by states
like Denmark, Luxembourg and Ireland about suggestions that, in an enlarged
Union, the role of the rotating Presidency should be reconsidered. It is clear
that the smaller states are anxious to dispel the idea that they are not able to
cope with the burden of the Presidency and to continue enjoying the
prominence in international politics that goes with it. Indeed it is probably
fair to say that, with the singular exception of the first Greek Presidency, it is
difficult to find examples of either new members or small states who have
been embarrassed or proved embarrassing when their turn came to take over
the Presidency. The fact that Greece assumed the Presidency so soon after
accession, combined with a certain apprehension about the policies it might
wish to pursue, can be said to have had a major impact on the rapid
development of the troika system. The ability of the preceding and succeeding
Presidency states to ensure that ongoing business is not overlooked and that
representational and negotiating roles are not neglected or abused provides a
useful safeguard within the rotating system. Indeed during the last Greek
Presidency the German representatives were able to use their troika role to
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ensure that consultations relating to the sensitive issues of both Turkey and
the FYROM were maintained.
It is clear too that the smaller states see the rotating Presidency as
affording them the chance to keep the major powers at bay, as well as
allowing them to ensure that their own interests are given some prominence
on the EPC/CFSP agenda. There is a clear concern expressed by some of
the smaller states, that obviously wish to maintain their separate identity in
the international system, about any proposals that might either hand the
running of the CFSP over to a directoire of the major states or, as was
spectacularly demonstrated by the events leading up to the first Danish
referendum on Maastricht, to the European Commission. For all the present
member states, with the possible exception of the newly federated Belgium,
participation in the CFSP is valued for the stimulus that it gives to the
continued assertion of national individuality in international politics rather
than as a step towards the submerging of those separate identities into
some sort of European identity. The continued opportunity that the present
Presidency arrangements offer to order the CFSP agenda and to represent
the Union as a whole for six months is clearly as important to the member
states as any arguments about the need for efficiency and continuity in a
Union of expanding numbers.
Therefore it does not seem likely that, during the next IGC, proposals
such as those so disastrously advanced by the Dutch in 1991 to integrate
the intergovernmental CF S P pillar into the EC policy-making and
implementing structure are going to receive much support from anything
like a majority of the member states. They might, however, be interested in
developing more fully the role of the expanded Secretariat, now fully
integrated into the Council Secretariat. Several of the smaller states have
clearly benefited since 1987 from assistance in running their Presidency
both from the troika arrangements and from the E PC Secretariat (now the
expanded CFSP Secretariat) in Brussels.
The exception to this enthusiasm for the continued separate
intergovernmental basis for the CFSP is, of course, the Commission which
now appears to have shifted its ground on the whole question of consistency
between CFSP and EC matters. In the 1980s, as Nuttall’s chapter makes
clear, the Commission was most keen to protect its unique competencies
within the EC structure from the intrusion of the member states, in particular
the larger ones and most especially Britain and France. More recently the
Commission seems to have detected advantage from a blurring of
competencies and policy-making processes. Nevertheless it has to be said
that as an independent actor in the CFSP process, the Commission has
maintained its reputation for reticence when it comes to operationalizing its
formal right of attendance at all E PC/CFSP meetings (since the Single
European Act) or its new right of shared initiative within the CFSP (since
the Treaty on European Union.) While Nuttall records one or two instances
 Conclusions 295

of the Commission successfully injecting its own perceptions into EPC

deliberations in the 1980s one is nevertheless left wondering why the
Commission is so anxious to extend its authority further in the CFSP
when it apparently has so little of actual substance to contribute to the
development of foreign policy positions and actions. As so often in the past
there is a danger that in seeking to extend its formal legal competence for
the sake of furthering integration as it sees it, the Commission is in danger
of demonstrating its actual incompetence to carry out such duties. It is
certainly less of an actor than it has the potential to be.
Another area where the member states seem anxious to preserve their
ability to act individually as well as collectively in the international system
concerns the issue of representation. It is ironic that while the larger states,
with the singular exception of Germany, have all experienced financial
problems in maintaining the size of their diplomatic services and extensive
level of their national representation, many of the smaller states in the
Union have justified an expansion of resources for national diplomatic services
by citing the need to participate effectively in the CFSP. Of course there
remains a large gap between the reach of the British, French, Italian and
German diplomatic services and the rest and there is a sense in which they
are all challenged by the extensive and rapidly g rowing external
representations of the Commission. There is also a sense in which all the
member states are united in their desire to restrain the challenge of a quasi-
European foreign office and diplomatic service built upon DG1A and the
staff of the Commission’s external representations. The smaller member
states will continue to benefit from their CFSP-related contacts in the complex
of working groups, and via COREUs, and they clearly value being able to
exploit the information and expertise generated by the diplomatic services
of the larger states.
For their part it may well be that in the future, in order to resist the
growing challenge from the Commission, the larger member states may
have to consider either the pooling of diplomatic resources or even a division
of labour in certain parts of the world. Both Britain and France are, for
instance, clearly struggling at present in their efforts to maintain
comprehensive national representations in all the states of the former Soviet
Union. Although the natural inclination of all the larger states would appear
to be to preserve as much as possible of their individual foreign policy
machines, they may well decide in the future that they can learn something
from the ways in which the smaller states have gained from the CFSP
process. It remains the case that all national diplomatic services would prefer
to pool a certain amount of their resources and therefore preserve a large
part of both their effectiveness and their individuality rather than consider
the creation of a full-blown European diplomatic service, particularly one
based in Brussels and most particularly one that might evolve out of the
European Commission.
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Nevertheless it is clear that the continuous enlargement in which the EU

is engaged does raise a serious question about the balance between the
large and small states in a system that retains an insistence on consensus.
Even if one accepts the arguments of participants that, in practice, the ‘club
atmosphere’ (which in any case may be harder to preserve as membership
becomes more diverse) means that consensus usually forms around the
median position, there remains a danger that the larger states will become
frustrated by the ability of the smaller states to prevent the achievement of
consensus. The most spectacular recent example of this, which informs much
of the debate about the need to reform the CFSP to prepare for future
enlargement, concerns the refusal of the Greek government to permit the
other member states collectively (they have all done it individually) to
recognize the FYROM. Many would argue that it is this frustration that has
led to Britain, France and Germany participating in the Contact Group
(with the USA and Russia) in an, admittedly unsuccessful, bid to find a
resolution of the situation in the former Yugoslavia. Realists would predict
that we are likely to see more of this ad hoc behaviour, and others would
agree—if the search for consensus within the CFSP proves to be frustrated
by its procedures, and ultimately by one member state.
However, it should also be made clear that there is not very much evidence
in the chapters dealing with the larger states of any great frustration about
the way that the CFSP operates on most issues. Britain, France and Germany
are not states that have clear national positions which they are prevented
from implementing by consensual procedures of the CFSP. Some of the
potential frustrations are, of course, forestalled by the anxiety of many
smaller states and new members to participate constructively in the CFSP
and to make the necessary national adjustments to enable this to occur.
Greece’s position on the FYROM can be seen as an act of rebellion against
the consensus, but it can also be seen as a perfectly reasonable defence of
the sort of individual vital interest that the CFSP system was designed to
protect.
What is clear is that the choice for the EU member states is no longer
between the multilateral action of the Fifteen on the one hand and unilateral
action on the other. No state in the Union seems anxious to attempt to go
it alone in contemporary international politics, least of all the newly unified
and potentially much more powerful Germany. To the extent that individual
states feel that their special interests are likely to be neglected within the
CFSP then they are most likely to seek similar minded allies from within
the Union—hence the establishment recently of subgroups concentrating on
developments within the Baltic area, within Central Europe and in relation
to North Africa. Even where an EU state feels that it is at odds with the
objectives of other member states, then the natural reflex would seem to be
to search for some EU partners—the unilateral pursuit of all but the most
limited of objectives would not seem to be an option that the member
 Conclusions 297

states of the Union are any longer prepared to consider. The nuclear weapons
of Britain and France are a giant exception to this rule, but here too isolation
may prove increasingly uncomfortable.

DEMOCRACY, MONEY AND THE CENTRALIZING

DILEMMA

One area that remains underdeveloped at both the national and European
level is that of the democratic control of the collective foreign policy activities
of the EU member states. While the European Parliament has now quite
considerable powers over the external relations of the European Community
(considerably greater in fact than those enjoyed by a number of national
parliaments in relation to the external activities of the member states) it has
not made much headway in relation to the CFSP other than in those areas
where the decisions taken are subsequently implemented using the resources
of the European Community. As in other areas of integrative activity the
individual member states are divided in their views about extending the powers
of the European Parliament, with Germany and Spain in the forefront of
those who would like to see more obvious democratic control of foreign
policy at the European level, while Britain and Denmark, and to a lesser
extent France, argue that national parliaments are the most appropriate
institutions for scrutinizing intergovernmental cooperation, given that it is
designed to preserve notions of national sovereignty.
The ability of the European Parliament to exert influence on the CFSP is
critically dependent on the attitude of the Presidency country. While a
Presidency such as that of Spain or the Netherlands is usually anxious to
keep the Parliament informed about CFSP developments, others such as
France and Britain have proved more reluctant. Nevertheless, it should be
pointed out that when the British, during their Presidency, offered to brief
members of the European Parliament on EPC matters provided they were
prepared to come to London, the MEPs refused on the principled grounds
that it was up to the Presidency to come to the European Parliament. Despite
the existence of clear foreign policy expertise within the Europe Parliament,
the member states’ governments seem anxious to preserve as much executive
control as they can and, to the extent that they are prepared to submit to
democratic scrutiny, with one or two exceptions they show a clear, and some
would say deeply hypocritical, preference for preserving the rights of their
national parliaments in this area.
One area where the European Parliament may find itself able to get a handle
on CFSP activities is via financing, for the member states have not been so
successful in maintaining a clear distinction between European Community
activities, which are financed from the Community budget and therefore
subjected to the scrutiny and control powers of the European Parliament, and
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the activities of the CFSP. If the CFSP was truly intergovernmental and separate
from the European Community then one might argue that it should be financed
by the member states themselves—as was EPC. The TEU is not that helpful on
this matter for it makes a distinction between the ‘administrative’ and ‘operational’
costs of implementing the CFSP. Administrative costs are automatically charged
to the Community budget but the Council is given the choice as to how
operational costs are to be charged. It can decide unanimously to charge them
to the Community budget or it can choose to finance them directly from the
member states. The Council has not been very successful in organizing finance
through the member states, partly because of wrangles about how the bills
should be divided up (a GNP scale is usually used) and partly because of the
reluctance of the member states to pay up. For example, six months after it was
agreed to split the cost of administering the Bosnian city of Mostar in 1994
between the Community budget and the member states, only Ireland, Greece
and Denmark had paid up their contributions. As a result the Council decided
that for 1995 all the costs of administering Mostar would be charged to the
Community budget. These are collective action problems of the kind all too
familiar to the UN.
The member states, for some of whom fundamental principles of
intergovernmentalism are involved, would appear to be caught on the horns of
a dilemma. Anxious to preserve their independence and to give both the
European Parliament and the Commission as little control of their CFSP activities
as possible, the member states have a principled interest in paying for the
CFSP themselves. However most diplomatic services have a natural resistance
to multilateral calls on their often tightly restricted budgets and so have a
pragmatic interest in ‘losing’ such expenditure in the overall Community budget.
For some states the dilemma is less painful than for others. While Belgium is
quite happy to see the CFSP financed from the Community budget with all
the attendant controls that this entails, states like Britain and France would
prefer to see national financing as the general rule. In practice, they often find
it judicious to ignore the questions of principle in order to, as they see it, save
a few posts in their national diplomatic services. The problem therefore is that
while the CFSP is meant to be intergovernmental and under the exclusive
control of the sovereign member states, in practice they have not been able to
get their act together and have had effectively to concede that the CFSP will be
predominately financed from the Community budget—to the extent that it will
produce significant Joint Actions requiring substantial resources.
For most of the 1980s the member states of the EU had little real difficulty
in determining the foreign policy issues that they would pursue collectively and
those that they would pursue unilaterally, albeit increasingly with EPC/CFSP
cover, or with at least the tacit approval of the other member states. It was
accepted that Britain and France, as nuclear powers and permanent members
of the UN Security Council had a special role to play in the world, while the
system was also informal and flexible enough to cope with occasional
 Conclusions 299

idiosyncratic behaviour by its members. Within a general Cold War dominated

consensus covering the nature of East-West relations, dealings with the
developing world and the importance of the non-military resolution of disputes,
individual governments were able to bring their particular interests to bear on
the EPC process. This was particularly the case with enlargement where new
members were often seen as potential ‘bridges’ between the Community and
various parts of the outside world. In the period covered by this book both
Portugal and Spain have worked hard to get their particular interests in Africa
and South America placed higher on the EPC agenda than they were previously.
Spain has succeeded in getting Spanish objectives accepted as Community
objectives and thus partially financed by Community funds. More recently the
arrival of Sweden and Finland has been seen as a possible bridge to the Baltic
states while Austria would seem to be providing the same service for Hungary
that Denmark has (now with help from Sweden) provided for Norway.

THE DOM ESTIC PUSH AND PULL

One of the major themes of this book has been the growing role of domestic
factors in foreign policy deliberations at the national level. It is a truism that all
aspects of European integration both intergovernmental and supranational have
been built from the top down. The state of affairs that exists today represents
the culmination of a series of deals between relatively strong European
governments which were confident that they could carry along their domestic
populations. The fact that economic cooperation has been developed primarily
within the supranational arrangements set up by the Rome Treaty and that
foreign policy cooperation has been primarily intergovernmental fundamentally
reflects the preferences of national governments and their assessments of the
balance of gains and losses that were likely to arise from seeking the advantages
of cooperation while preserving as much national autonomy as possible. It has
become apparent in recent times and especially since the end of the Cold War
that the nature of the state in Western Europe (and indeed elsewhere in the
international system) has changed to the extent that domestic forces have come
to take a much greater interest and play a much greater role in the external
activities of governments. This has given rise to a significant reduction of their
foreign policy flexibility and challenges the élite consensus on which the European
Union in all its guises was built. The more that domestic forces shape foreign
policy then the more national idiosyncrasies and interests will be highlighted,
often in a way which challenges consensus at the European level. European
integration in general and the EPC/CFSP procedures in particular, worked in
the way that they did because governments were given a pretty free hand by
their electorates in their dealings with the governments of other states. All this
would appear to have changed in recent years and the EU national governments
can no longer rely on the domestic acceptance of deals done with their EU
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partners. Thus while the twelve EC governments eventually reached an

agreement with which they were satisfied at Maastricht, their problems began
when they tried to ratify those agreements back home. Similarly, while the
Swiss government had little difficulty in both applying for and successfully
negotiating membership of the EEA it could not persuade a majority of its
electorate that this was in the Swiss national interest—much the same occurred
when the Norwegian government negotiated membership of the EU and then
failed to obtain a supportive vote in a national referendum.
It is argued here, and it has been demonstrated in the country studies, that
this sea change in the nature of European states is likely to inhibit significantly
the development of the CFSP because it will tend to highlight national differences,
resist further inroads into national sovereignty and require national governments
regularly to demonstrate how collective policies and positions provide specific
advantages (and minimal costs!) to the participating states. It will therefore be
that much harder to build a collective foreign policy by coordinating national
policies, if they are increasingly domestically oriented and developed by
politicians who are forced to have a keen idea of the short-term electoral
implications of any stance which they might choose to adopt.
A further complication is added by the fragmenting tendencies within
European states. Although enthusiasts of ‘multi-level governance’ make much
of the integrative possibilities of a growing European regionalism it is clear that
this tendency can only confuse the management of a collective European foreign
policy. Apart from increasing the temptation for EU states to meddle in each
other’s internal affairs (see the references to the Netherlands’s increasingly
complex relations with Flanders and Wallonia) and thus potentially damage the
‘zone of peace’ that characterizes relations between EU states, the CFSP depends
heavily on the central governments of the member states being in a position
both to negotiate and to deliver policy positions. If Bonn is to be challenged by
the Länder, or Madrid by Catalonia, or Rome by northern Italy, or indeed
London by Scotland, then the task of foreign policy coordination will become
that much more complex.
In essence we are suggesting that the states of the EU are becoming weaker
in that their executives have less freedom of action and are becoming more
distinctively different from one another as a result of responding to differing
domestic rather than similar international stimuli.

POLICY ISSUES

One consequence of enlargement, however, is that it is becoming much harder

to identify the priority of the EU’s foreign policy interests, especially now
that the agenda of the CFSP is potentially much freer and larger in the new
European environment. One potential conflict of interest informs almost all
the chapters in this book and that revolves around the concern that a number
 Conclusions 301

of states are expressing about the German and British support for a
concentration of attention on the situation in Eastern and Central Europe,
and the assumption that the Union’s best interests will be served by facilitating
the soonest possible admission of those states to the Union itself. While
France fears any weakening of the ties that bind a Union (and Germany),
states like Spain, Portugal, Greece and, to a lesser extent, Ireland have good
cause to fear the financial costs of an enlargement to the East. It is generally
accepted that neither the CAP nor the Structural Funds can be offered to the
Eastern applicants on the same terms that the present members currently
enjoy and therefore an eastern enlargement means a probable change in the
current arrangements which will leave them worse off than at present. These
states therefore have a considerable financial incentive to push the case for a
renewed foreign policy focus on the Mediterranean area. Furthermore, Spain,
Portugal and Greece are joined by Italy and France in voicing similar security
concerns about the Mediterranean area, and in particular North Africa, to
those that are expressed by Germany and her allies about Eastern Europe.
There are therefore a number of cross-cutting elements which suggest that in
the future the member states are likely to be seriously divided on the issue of
foreign policy priorities now that the discipline imposed by the Cold War has
evaporated.
In terms of the argument abut North Africa and Eastern Europe the issue
is further confused by the fact that, while multilateral solutions are sought for
both security dilemmas, those most concerned about North Africa cannot
hold out, as those concerned with Eastern Europe can, the prospect of eventual
membership of the EU. With regard to both areas of interest there is another
potential divide between those states like Britain, which are primarily interested
in using the CFSP to develop notions of stability and who believe that the
best thing that the Community can offer is access to its markets, and those
like Spain and France who would like to see restricted access but offers of
financial aid given to North Africa. Both contrast with Germany which is
keen to share the burden of aid giving, which it supports, with the other EU
members.
Things do not look much clearer on the security front. As the contributions
indicate, the states are uncertain and divided about the exact nature of the
threat to security in Western Europe and they are similarly divided between
those who have a preference for working with a reformed NATO (and thus
guaranteeing continued American involvement) and those who would prefer
to operate within the Western European Union. The basic conflict that is
inherent in the ambiguous references to WEU in the Maastricht Treaty—on
the one hand referring to it as the ‘defence arm of the Union’ and on the
other as the ‘European arm of NATO’ has been greatly modified by changes
in the American position (so that the Clinton administration now seems ready
to accept that WEU and NATO need not be seen as in potential conflict with
one another), but it remains the case that security questions are as likely to
302 David Allen

divide the EU member states as to unite them.4 While many of the chapters
in this volume agonize about the future role of WEU and its relationship to
the EU and the USA, there are surprisingly few references to what might be
described as the new items on the security agenda. Thus the question of mass
immigration or of environmental degradation or even the extent to which
European states should involve themselves in military activity away from
Europe receive little consideration (with the exception of the many references
to the internal divisions over the Gulf War) even though they are likely to
bring to the fore differing national perceptions and priorities. At the level of
generality, there is a consensus that effective security can only be achieved
together; on particular problems, unity starts to splinter.

CFSP: A LOSS OF MOMENTUM

Where does this leave our consideration of the nature of the actors in the
CFSP process? They would all appear to share a common interest in maintaining
the core elements of the European Union which means protecting the single
market and possibly the common policies from external or internal subversion
(although Britain’s attitude towards the CAP and certain of the budgetary
arrangements remains a notable exception to this general observation). The
member states share a general interest in the preservation and promotion of
democracy and market economies although they do not necessarily agree on
how this is best to be achieved. They share an interest in preserving the zone of
peace that they have created and in extending it, possibly by enlargement but
also by encouraging other regional groupings to follow the West European
example.
While the Twelve were prepared to express considerable solidarity in the
face of enlargement to fifteen, requiring that the new members accept both the
‘acquis communautaire’ and the ‘acquis politique’ in its entirety, there are now
growing signs of significant divisions between emerging subgroups of states of
the Union. We have already mentioned the potential conflict between those
who would concentrate on Eastern Europe and those who favour the
Mediterranean as a primary focus. Most of the other states, and particularly
Italy, have expressed concern about discussions between Germany and France
around the notion of a ‘core Europe’, particularly to the extent that the core
might be regarded as exclusive rather than merely the fast track of a multi-
speed Europe. Britain and France remain, for the time being, states with an
enormous extra European presence by dint of their possession of nuclear weapons
and their permanent membership of the UN Security Council. They are,
however, threatened by the new status of a reunified Germany and by the new
possibilities of rank improvement that are open to Germany, Italy and Spain
because of the changes in the nature of power and influence in the international
system. While concern with relative rank and influence clearly affects all the
 Conclusions 303

member states, large and small alike, they also demonstrate remarkably little
enthusiasm for chancing their arm and going it alone in the new and apparently
less restrictive international system.
All the states have a stake in the continuance of the CFSP but few demonstrate
any real enthusiasm for advancing the arrangements much beyond what exists
already. Some of course would like to see the CFSP brought into the EC part of
the TEU but even the Benelux states and Germany would draw the line at
introducing majority voting on military matters, and few states seem prepared to
consider establishing the sort of central institutions that would enable the CFSP to
make a fundamental integrative leap forwards. In truth it is hard to imagine a
genuine common foreign policy without a common diplomatic service and a means
of identifying and operationalizing a notion of the European interest. National
foreign policies are usually identified by their pursuit of the national interest. The
national interest is, at one level, that set of interests identified by the elected
government. It is difficult therefore, to separate the notion of a foreign policy from
the idea of a state with a set of interests identified by a government. Because it is
clear that no European government, again with the possible exceptions of Belgium
and Luxembourg, is, as yet, prepared to commit suicide by agreeing to the
establishment of a government, as opposed to governance, at the European level,
it is hard to see how the CFSP can develop beyond the ceiling that it has already
reached. The realists are probably wrong when they pessimistically anticipate the
collapse of all the institutionalized arrangements that characterized collective foreign
policy cooperation between European states during the Cold War, but it is excessively
optimistic to believe that the current level of institutionalization, which allows for
the parallel pursuit of national foreign policies, can develop much further. It may
even be optimistic to believe that an enlarged Union of more heterogeneous states,
governed by élites whose margin of manoeuvre is increasingly restricted by domestic
forces and which are no longer bound so closely together by the ‘glue’ of Cold War
systemic imperatives, can preserve the degree of foreign policy cooperation and
collective action that existed prior to 1989. There is little in this volume to suggest
that the demise of the European state as a foreign policy actor is imminent. On the
contrary the balance of experience of EPC and the CFSP for both large and small
states alike would seem to suggest that they have created the means for preserving
(and in some cases advancing) a degree of autonomy in the contemporary
international system.

NOTES

1 See Alan S. Milward, with the assistance of George Brennan and Federico Romero,
The European Rescue of the Nation-State, London, Routledge, 1992. This conclusion
takes as its working hypothesis an adaptation of Milward’s thesis that European
integration is the way in which the nation-state has adapted and survived in post-
war Europe.
304 David Allen

2 For the most influential expression of this view, see John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the
future: instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, vol. 15, no. 1,
pp.5–56 (and comments by Hoffmann and Keohane, vol. 15, no. 2, Fall 1990, pp.191–
9.
3 Indeed some go further, to talk of an Atlanticist or even a global ‘pluralistic security
community’. See Richard Ned Lebow, ‘The long peace, the end of the Cold War, and
the failure of realism’, International Organization, vol. 48, no. 2, Spring 1994, pp.268–73.
4 Not least because individual member states themselves waver on their commitment
to a new security order. See Amand Menon’s analysis of belated French moves back
towards NATO in ‘From independence to cooperation: France, NATO and European
security’, International Affairs, vol. 71, no. 1, January 1995, pp.19–34.