ABSTRACT
The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is a unique European Union (EU) policy area, because through policy making and implementation in this area EU policy makers discuss and determine what the EU will (try) be to its counterparts around the world: What role it will play, which objective it will promote and through which means it will promote them. Many questions surround CFSP, some focus on the appropriateness of the term CFSP: To what extent do the outputs in this area represent a foreign policy worthy of the name and to what extent are those outputs common? Others are related to the substance and nature of the policy: Is there a truly European interest system or is the CFSP an arena for promoting national interests? This is related to the question of agency: Does it make any sense to discuss the EU’s activity on the global stage? Is the EU and entity capable of such activity? These questions touch upon the two fundamental features of international actors: the ability to define goals and possession of the means to pursue them. On paper the EU has a list of foreign policy goals – democratization, stabilization, conflict prevention, cooperation toward tackling supranational criminal activity, promoting good governance – and a catalogue of foreign policy instruments, e.g., trade and aid, strategic partnerships, diplomatic statements, and imposing arms embargoes and military missions. However the priority between the goals was never defined and the authority to activate the instruments is split and fuzzy (Smith, 2014). Even if the EU is an actor it is certainly a multifaceted and highly complex actor, and there are several different levels in which EU foreign action is enacted (Hill and Smith, 2011). This chapter discusses the EU’s foreign policy and it will briefly touch upon all of these issues. It does not offer unequivocal answers but it does review the answers proposed in the literature and their implication. The next section discusses the historical evolution of CFSP. Sections three and four review the theoretical discussions of CFSP. Section five reviews some of the future challenges for EU global action, and concludes.
