How can one reconcile the number, the political equality and the diversity of states? This Chaillot Paper by Antonio Missiroli, who has been a research fellow at the Institute since December 1997, is the outcome of a series of seminars organised by the Institute on flexibility in the CFSP, its advantages and its drawbacks.
Militarily non-aligned Finland and Sweden are in many ways borderline countries in Europe. Historically, they are newcomers in the process of integration; geographically, they are located at the border of the Union; and borders play an important role also in their foreign and security policies – both because of their concern for the nature of the EU’s outer borders and because of their wish to draw a (border-)line between crisis management and defence.
In 1994-1995, one of the first joint actions by the European Union in the framework of the CFSP concerned the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. And it was successful: during the NPT Review Conference in April-May 1995, the member countries of the Union played an essential role in ensuring the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
This paper analyses one of WEU’s several types of membership while addressing the issue of participation of WEU Associate Members in the EU decision-making process for Petersberg operations. European Members of NATO which are not members of the EU (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland, and Turkey) are Associate Members of WEU, with which they maintain a close relationship.
With the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty on 1 May 1999 and the European Council's Cologne Declaration of 4 June 1999, further steps have been taken towards the realisation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and therefore towards a common defence policy.
The enclosed papers were presented at a conference held in Paris from 27-28 May. This could not have been more timely, coming as it did immediately after the Washington and Bremen summits and shortly before the Cologne summit at a period when Europe was being subject to considerable scrutiny, both from within and without, about its overall composite capabilities in the light of the Kosovo operation then still under way.
Following an approach adopted by WEU well before other European security organisations, the Institute has devoted part of its research to regions that do not yet include full member states of either the EU or NATO. After the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty, the CFSP will only have sense and credibility to the extent that it addresses the concerns of third countries, which will put the EU’s force of attraction as well as its conviction to the test.
Cooperative security will increasingly replace the traditional balance of forces mechanisms, to the extent that multilateralism spreads as the means by which states are coping with the manifold new challenges to the prosperity and security of their citizens. The borderline between international humanitarian concerns and the definition of national interests is therefore also fading.
The present Occasional Paper collects some of the materials produced for the Seminar on Flexibility and Enhanced Cooperation in European Security Matters: Assets or Liabilities?, that the WEU Institute for Security Studies organised on 22-23 October 1998 in Paris.
The British Government has recently launched a new initiative by making clear that it would like to see an enhancement of the European Union’s capacity to have recourse to military force. This represents both an opening of the British Government’s mind on the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) and a re-opening of a debate on the European Union’s relationship with the Western European Union (WEU).