The International Relations of the Eu by Steve Marsh & Hans Mackenstein

Author:Steve Marsh & Hans Mackenstein [Marsh, Steve & Mackenstein, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317873440
Google: mXx_BAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 23220900
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

The EU and the European security architecture

The EU’s efforts to stabilise Central and South-Eastern Europe must be seen in the context of the sheer enormity and complexity of the challenge. Its mixed record clearly owes in part to problems of internal competence, to inconsistent national co-ordination and to evolving but sometimes inadequate institutional structures. However, this picture is further complicated by a European security architecture comprising principally Cold War institutions competing to reinvent themselves sufficiently to secure post-Cold War roles in a radically changed security environment.

The warm afterglow of the 1989 velvet revolutions and hopes of a new world order encouraged visions of a new pan-European security system rooted in an inclusive architecture of interlocking institutions. With Cold War rigidities swept away there appeared to be greater ‘interaction opportunities’ through which mutual confidence could be built and shared norms and common values developed.114 There was even a collection of existing institutions through which potentially those norms could be propounded, confidence-building measures developed and military and economic security extended. Indeed, there was much talk of a new collective security system,115 albeit that not everyone was convinced by liberal institutionalists’ claims about the ability of institutions to modify state behaviour sufficiently.116

Interestingly the EC at its Strasburg European Council Summit in December 1989 laid claim to the Community being ‘the corner-stone of a new European architecture’,117 pretensions rooted in its own internal ambitions and a new security agenda that emphasised increasingly non-traditional elements in which the EC was expected to excel.118 Within this task it would work alongside the Council of Europe, NATO, C/OSCE, UN, WEU and financially based institutions that would play a role in channelling reconstruction funds to Central and South-Eastern Europe. These included the IBRD, the EIB, in which the EU was the majority shareholder, and the new EU-sponsored European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Working together it was possible that a sense of inclusiveness could be exported to the strategically homeless, normative congruence could be established and maintained, and concerns could be met as to ensuring coherence within, and complementarity between, the economic and military security domains.119

The early 1990s, however, witnessed the opportunity for interlocking institutions squandered and EU claims upon a leading role in the security architecture challenged as the various institutions embarked upon a Darwinian struggle for post-Cold War survival. One of the first consequences of this was duplication of effort, increased overlap of competencies and weakened coordination. EU security ambitions made it a leading culprit in this respect. As it developed more systematic political co-operation it ‘inevitably started to move into security-related areas such as OSCE policy and disarmament’.120 Its growing involvement in election monitoring led it to significant overlap with OSCE and UN competencies. Also its democracy promotion strategies, provision of technical and legal assistance within its Europe Agreements, and JHA initiatives such as increased border guard co-operation led the EU to overlap increasingly with the Council of Europe.121 Furthermore, and much more controversially, its pretensions in the TEU to the eventual framing of

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