Abstract
Common foreign, security and defence policy has become one of the main pillars of the European Union. Given the nature of European integration that had more or less focused on economic fields for several decades, this is a new phenomenon. The governing principle of the areas of foreign, security and defence policy cooperation in Europe has been intergovernmentalism, featuring the unanimity principle (which essentially guarantees national veto) and a limited role for supranational institutions like the European Commission. Despite the fact that successive treaty revisions brought more power for the Commission and the European Parliament, the basic principle of foreign, security and defence policy of the Union remains to be guided by intergovernmentalism.
However, this does not mean that the practice of foreign, security and defence policy in the EU has never changed. On the contrary, while maintaining the principle of intergovernmentalism, exemplified by policy and decision-making process that is different from the ‘first pillar’ even under the Lisbon Treaty, the practice has undergone substantial changes over the past few decades. This article, first, revisits the tradition of intergovernmentalism in foreign, security and defence policy cooperation in the context of European integration, and second, examines various aspects of transformations of the intergovernmental principles that can be observed today. The main purpose of this article is to shed a new light on intergovernmentalism and to chart new research agendas in the field.
Such models/theories as ‘intensive transgovernmentalism’ (Helen Wallace) and ‘constrained intergovernmentalism’ (Catherine Gegout) as well as the idea of Europeanization and socialization all preset fresh looks at the area. This article also argues that policy models developed in the context of internal policy such as OMC (open method of coordination) can also be applied to foreign, security and defence policy. At the same time, the practice of pragmatic cooperation seen particularly in the ESDP/CSDP field can be applied to other fields as well. More interactions between models/theories traditionally applied to internal policy and those on external relations are necessary more than ever before.
