The EU's response to crisis situations in collaboration with the UN and NATO

Abstract

The European Union's (EU) capability of intervening in crisis situations, in and outside Europe, has gone from being practically inexistent to becoming one of the strong points of the EU's foreign policy. Amicable relations and loyal co-operation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations (UN) were and will remain essential to the achievement of this success. The first part of this dissertation is aimed at analysing the various developments in the EU' s foreign policy over the past fifty years and the various institutions and bodies which deal with crisis response. Following the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the EU experienced several failed attempts to establish some sort of political co-operation. With the birth of the European Political Co-operation (EPC) in 1970 and the signing of the Single European Act (SEA) in 1986, some success in this area was achieved. As we shall see, the breakthrough for EU foreign policy came with the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992. The EPC was developed in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and became one of the three pillars of the EU. In this Treaty the Member States also put forward the possibility of creating common military assets for the EU as part of a common defence policy. With the signing of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997 the CFSP's capacity for action was reinforced through the introduction of more coherent instruments and more effective decision-making.