From EPC to CFSP: Union Foreign Policy

Abstract

The replacement of European Political Cooperation (EPC) by a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) under the terms of the 1993 Treaty on European Union (TEU) promised to create a much more effective European foreign policy within the context of a new commitment to external policy as a whole, including for the first time security and defence policy. Under TEU, it will be recalled that the EC was transformed into an EU constructed upon three ‘pillars’, the second of which contained CFSP. Thus CFSP immediately became one of the new Union activities and may appropriately be labelled Union foreign policy. An intergovernmental approach to foreign policy was reinforced by the pillar structure, but it was envisaged that CFSP would be integrated into other Union activities in ways that appeared to resolve continuing debates between integrationists and intergovernmentalists.