Objectives of the CFSP

Principles of the Maastricht Treaty
The European Security Strategy: a new impetus for the CFSP
ESDP: giving the CFSP an operational crisis prevention and management tool

Principles of the Maastricht Treaty

The Treaty on the European Union (TEU) [1] was signed at Maastricht on 7 February 1992 and entered into force on 11 November 1993. It is both the logical conclusion of twenty years of European Political Cooperation and a resolutely new and ambitious development. The Treaty of Maastricht on European Union determines the objectives and implementation of the CFSP. In the Treaty’s Preamble, the signatories affirm that they are "RESOLVED to implement a common foreign and security policy including the progressive framing of a common defence pol-icy, which might lead to a common defence in accordance with the provisions of Article 17, thereby reinforcing the European identity and its independence in order to promote peace, security and pro-gress in Europe and in the world". To that end, the Maastricht Treaty instituted a structure based on three pillars, in a single in-stitutional framework known as "the European Union". Common foreign and security policy is the second pillar of the European Union. As a new dimension of European construction, this common policy contains elements of in-tegration; yet it retains operational rules that are close to intergovernmental mechanisms, distinct from those governing the first pillar (European Communities) and closer to those governing the third pillar (Justice and Home Affairs - JHA) The CFSP innovated on three fundamental points:
 Title V of the TEU, which deals with the CFSP, is more far-reaching than Title III of the Single European Act that already dealt with foreign policy. The CFSP covers "all areas of foreign and security policy", including the "progressive framing of a common defence policy".
 Not only the Member States "shall inform and consult one another within the Council on any matter of foreign and security policy", but they shall above all "ensure that their national policies conform to the common positions" they defend within international organizations and conferences. A State could no longer dissociate itself from a common position.
 Lastly, the Treaty created a new legal instrument in addition to the common position, namely the joint action (JA) that makes it possible to mobilize Union financial resources.

CFSP objectives as defined in Title V articles of the Maastricht Treaty are as follows:
1) to develop and consolidate democracy and the rule of law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms;
2) to safeguard the common values, fundamental interests, independence and integrity of the Un-ion;
3) to strengthen the security of the Union and its Member States in all ways;
4) to preserve peace and strengthen international security, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter, as well as the principles of the Helsinki Final Act and the objec-tives of the Paris Charter;
5) to promote international cooperation.

These objectives are the CFSP’s basic principles, as well as the spirit in which Member States organize cooperation on foreign policy among themselves and their relations with third countries. Unlike the Community policy which confers precisely and limitedly defined competencies to the European Community, the CFSP’s scope is defined broadly.

The European Security Strategy: a new impetus for the CFSP

The European Security Strategy (ESS) [2] framed by Mr Javier Solana was adopted by the European Council of December 2003. It describes in detail the objectives assigned to the CFSP area. Following the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the divisions created by the war in Iraq in the spring of 2003, the ESS made it possible for Union Member States to first share a common vision of Union security.

The ESS has laid the foundations for European solidarity in the face of common external threats and for the collective action required to address those threats. To start with, it made an as-sessment of the world which the European Union is now part of and defined the principal global challenges as follows:

 wars;
 poverty;
 disease;
 security;
 energy dependence;

as well as the key threats which the European Union must prepare to address, namely:

 terrorism;
 weapons of mass destruction proliferation;
 regional conflicts;
 State failure;
 organized crime.

The ESS is organized around three main thrusts:

 defining more active policies to pursue the European Union’s strategic objectives;
 creating synergies between all the diplomatic resources available to the Union and its Member States;
 building the diplomatic, civil and military capacities of the Union and its Member States. It also involves building security in the immediate vicinity of the European Union, in the Balkans, the Southern Caucasus, the Middle East, and more generally around the Mediterranean Basin, notably as part of cooperation in the framework of the Barcelona Process.

More globally speaking, promoting an international order based on effective multilateralism, international institutions (the United Nations first and foremost) and regional organizations is central to the European Security Strategy.

The ESS is implemented through all the actions conducted in the CFSP/ESDP framework. In order to clarify certain aspects, the European Union has also adopted thematic and geographic strategies.

ESDP: giving the CFSP an operational crisis prevention and management tool

The "Brief guide to the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP)" provides accurate and thorough information on the functioning of ESDP and its missions.

The Maastricht Treaty achieved an essential development in establishing that "the progressive framing of a common defence policy, [which] might lead to a common defence". The Treaty of Amsterdam, which was signed on 2 October 1997 and entered into force on 1 May 1999, specifies that the common defence policy includes missions known as the "Petersberg tasks", i.e. humanitar-ian and rescue tasks, peace-keeping missions, and combat-force tasks in crisis management, includ-ing peace-making missions.

The decision to implement an independent European security and defence policy was made at the Cologne European Council in June 1999. The ESDP was defined at the time as the establish-ment of credible operational capabilities on which the CFSP could rely.

As an integral part of the CFSP, the ESDP gives the European Union the possibility of using civilian and military capabilities for conflict prevention and international crisis management. The ESDP thus supplements the range of capabilities at the Union’s disposal in the area of CFSP and external relations in general.

The ESDP is governed by the same principles and procedures as the CFSP and uses special tools, such as the European Union Military Staff (EUMS), the Military Committee (EUMC), spe-cialized agencies, etc. But the resources used are still national ones and the ESDP provides a framework for identifying and developing those capabilities and coordinating and using them autonomously.

The ESDP can also be a purely military tool enabling the European Union to deploy its armed forces in peace-keeping missions or, where necessary, in peace enforcement missions.

For example, the first ESDP military mission was the Artemis mission that took place from 12 June to 1 September 2003 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That operation encom-passed 1,800 European troops with a view to securing and stabilizing the Bunia region and trans-porting humanitarian aid.

Similarly, a military force comprising over 7,000 troops has been deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2 December 2004 by the EUFOR mission as Operation ALTHEA to take over from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) troops. This purely military mission is aimed at maintaining peace in the country and security its territory.

The ESDP also complies with the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations. Its objective is not to create a European army, but to provide the deployability and conflict settlement capa-bility required to achieve the objectives of the CFSP.

The European Union and NATO are united by a "strategic partnership in crisis manage-ment" founded on the Berlin Plus agreement. The EU-NATO relationship based on cooperation and transparency is intended to define the most appropriate military response to a crisis, while respecting the autonomy of the two organizations. The EU and NATO have agreed also to exchange in-formation on their respective capability development in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of military capabilities. National armed forces are to remain under the control of national commanders and to be led by a supreme military command solely during EU- or NATO-led missions. The ESDP is intended to promote peaceful conflict settlement and the complementarity be-tween its civilian and military aspects is also one of its key features. ESDP military capabilities are hence supplemented by key civilian areas defined during the Santa Maria da Feira European Coun-cil of June 2000:

 Police capabilities. The Union has launched several police missions in different theatres of operation. For example, the European Union Border Assistance Mission for the Rafah Cross-ing Point (EU BAM Rafah) was launched on 30 November 2005 following the "Agreement on Movement and Access" to the Gaza Strip. The aim of EU BAM Rafah, which includes more than 70 personnel from the EU, is to provide third-party monitoring in order to open and control the Rafah Crossing Point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

 The rule of law. EUJUST LEX, a rule of law mission, was launched on 1 July 2005, for instance, following a request from the Iraqi Transitional Government. The aim of this operation is to train, outside the Iraqi territory, some 800 Iraqi senior officials and executive staff from the police, the judiciary and the penitentiary administration.

 Civilian administration. On 15 December 2005, the European Union launched an EU police advisory team (EUPAT) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. EUPAT was aimed at supporting the development of an efficient and professional police service based on Euro-pean standards of policing. In June 2006, EUPAT was replaced by Commission programmes, thereby illustrating the continuity of EU action through its different pillars.