EUROPEAN SECURITY: DEVELOPMENT AND PRACTICE OF THE
FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU)
(Filed as Zagreb Introduction Lecture)
1. It is a great pleasure and a privilege to speak on European security at the
Diplomatic Academy in Zagreb, where I spent three fascinating years as UK
Ambassador from 1997-2000, followed by a year as Deputy High Representative in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Mostar.
2. I have divided the subject into three parts. We shall look first at the development
and practice of the EU’s foreign and security policies, focussing on the 57
countries that participate in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE). The most difficult relationship is with Russia. Russia will feature in this
session, but I shall deal also with the present crisis in our the third session, on the 40th
anniversary this year of the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, and the 25th anniversary of the Charter of Paris for a
New Europe. The second session will focus on Former Yugoslavia.
3. A senior British diplomat said in 1996, just after the end of the war in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH), that as diplomats spend their lives working in the midst of
history, they had better try to understand it. So, I’ll begin with some history.
Winston Churchill (WSC), by this time in opposition in the UK, made two
influential speeches in 1946. The first was his “iron curtain” speech in Fulton
Missouri, home base of US President Truman. Speaking before Tito’s break with
Stalin in 1948, Churchill perceived the iron curtain as running from Stettin (Szczecin)
on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic. The second was his “Europe unite” speech
in Zurich. WSC appealed to the US to remain engaged in Europe, and contribute to
its defence and reconstruction in view of the growing threat to freedom, democracy
and prosperity posed by an erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union. He appealed to France
and Germany to overcome their enmity. “We must build a kind of United States of
Europe” WSC had in mind that the peace treaties concluded in Paris after the First
World War had failed to prevent a second, for three reasons in particular:
 US withdrawal from Europe, and failure to join the League of Nations devised
by President Wilson.
 The absence of Russia.
 The lack of lasting, solidly based reconciliation between the principal
protagonists.
4. In 1946 WSC envisaged the UK playing the role of benevolent semi detached
supporter of a united Europe, at the centre of three concentric circles of power and
influence: in its relationships with the US, in a revived Europe, and in the still intact
British Commonwealth and Empire.
5. WSC’s appeals were heeded, in both the US, and in the parts of Europe that had
not come under the control of the Soviet Union behind the “iron curtain”. The coup
that Stalin engineered in Czechoslovakia in 1948, and his attempt, that began in the
same year, to drive the Soviet Union’s former allies out of Berlin, fostered the
process of European recovery and reconciliation. During the Soviet blockade of
Berlin, the Mayor, Ernst Reuter, showed the world a different kind of German leader,
brave, charismatic and democratic. The Federal republic of Germany (FRG) was able
to join the Council of Europe (founded by the Treaty of London on 5 May 1949),
guardian of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which entered into force on 3 September 1953,
already in 1950.
6. Among those who, like Churchill, had experienced at first hand the failed post
WW1 peace settlement, was the League of Nations’ first Deputy Secretary General,
Jean Monnet (JM), a political economist who had acted as an adviser to the French
delegation in 1919. Monnet had advised against imposing punitive reparations on
Germany, but the British and French governments rejected his proposals for a
new European economic order based on cooperation between victors and
vanquished. He returned to the charge after WWII. It was obvious that without a
German recovery, there would be no European recovery. The circumstances were
thus propitious for JM’s ideas to be put into practice. The EU began (with the
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) – one of Monnet’s proposals –
established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951), as a peace-building project that
would use economic means to build an “ever closer union”, based on
comprehensive Franco-German reconciliation.
7. The US contributed economically through the Marshall Plan. The European
Recovery Programme was launched in April 1948 and the new German currency, the
Deutschmark (DM) two months later. The US led North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO), established by the Washington Treaty in April 1949, has been
the cornerstone of peace and security in Europe ever since. Article 5 provides that an
attack on one member of the Alliance is an attack on all. I should add that early plans
for a European Defence Community were rejected by the French parliament in
1954. The UK then made a commitment through the Western European Union – a
defence organisation set up before NATO – to station troops in Germany: a
commitment to forward defence against the Soviet Union. The WEU has been wound
up (2011) and its tasks and institutions folded into the EU’s foreign and security
apparatus, through the Lisbon Treaty.
Meanwhile, ECSC members began
negotiations for a wider European Economic Community. The UK stood aside in
view of the loss of sovereignty that would be involved – an historic mistake.
8. When the Treaty of Rome entered into force on 1 January 1958, Western
Europe possessed three effective regional organisations:
 Promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law (the Council of
Europe),
 Security against the Soviet threat (NATO),
 Prosperity and ever-closer union (European Economic Community).
The six founding members of the EEC were also members of NATO and the COE.
The contrast with the post world war one period could hardly be greater. 13 years
after the armistice in 1918, Austria’s largest bank, the Credit Anstalt, crashed, on 5
May 1931, precipitating an enormous crisis that contributed to the Nazis’ rise to
power.
9. However, in 1958 the Cold war was at its height. The Soviet Union asserted that
the Western powers were abusing their position in Berlin to subvert the Soviet bloc.
West Berlin should become a demilitarised free city. This crisis culminated in
construction of the infamous Berlin Wall, which began on 13 August 1961. The
Wall influenced much that followed. A new “Ostpolitik” was needed. In 1967
NATO adopted the report of the Belgian foreign minister Pierre Harmel. In future the
alliance would not only deter Soviet aggression, it would also be open to dialogue
and cooperation with the Warsaw Pact. The Harmel report, the election in 1969 of
Willy Brandt, the first Social Democratic Chancellor in Germany since 1930, the
1971 Berlin agreement, and renunciation of force treaties (which came into force in
1972) between the FRG, the GDR, Poland, and the Soviet Union, taken together,
amounted to a significant change in the Western position.
10. The Soviet Union had changed its position also. It had compromised over
Berlin, and abandoned proposals, characteristic of Soviet peace and security
propaganda initiatives in the mid 1950s, to exclude the US and Canada from Europe.
It now sought a European Security Conference that would serve as a substitute
peace treaty, confirming its hold on territory conquered by the Red Army in 1944-45.
11. The CSCE negotiations, which began in late 1972, were very important for
the development of foreign and security policy coordination in (what is now) the
EU. European Political Cooperation (EPC) had begun as an informal consultation
mechanism in 1970. In preparations for the CSCE it became operational. Common
positions, focussed on democracy and human rights, were worked out for
negotiation with the US, the Soviet Union and neutral and non-aligned countries such
as Yugoslavia. The opening of the negotiations in Helsinki coincided with the first
enlargement, which included the UK, Denmark, and Ireland. Ireland’s membership
was important in that the EEC now had a neutral and non-aligned state in its ranks.
12. For EEC member states the Helsinki Final Act (HFA, 1975) was the human
rights benchmark. In a country such as Romania where I served in 1981-82,
representatives of EEC embassies would draw up reports for Brussels, drawing on our
experience, for example in granting of marriage visas, treatment of journalists and
dissidents. Unanimity was not always easy. The FRG was always anxious to avoid
giving countries such as Poland – martial law and the rise of Solidarnosc was the big
issue of the 1980s - an excuse to accuse it of revisionism. NATO coordination
followed much the same pattern.
13. In July 1974 the Greek junta (which had seized power in 1967) contrived a coup
d’etat in Cyprus, and proclaimed union with Greece. The coup precipitated a
Turkish invasion a few days later, and partition of the island, which persists to this
day. The invasion precipitated the fall of the junta; Greece’s return to democracy
and the Council of Europe, revival of the Association Agreement concluded in 1962,
and, in 1975 an application for membership. The Commission’s opinion was,
unsurprisingly, negative. Greece was a poor country compared with all existing
members except perhaps Ireland. Its democratic credentials were not well
established. However, personal friendship between the French President Giscard
d’Estaing and the Greek Prime Minister Constantin Karamanlis, who had spent the
junta years in Paris, worked wonders. The Council overturned the Commission’s
opinion and Greece, perceived as the birthplace of democracy, joined in 1981. Nine
became ten in the second enlargement.
14. The third enlargement involved Portugal and Spain, both still fascist
dictatorships in the early 1970s, although Portugal had been a founding member of
NATO. Rapid revolutionary change began in Portugal in April 1974. Initially it
looked as if radicals and communists would gain the upper hand in the Carnation
revolution, but liberal democracy eventually took hold. Portugal applied to join the
EEC in 1977 and was admitted in 1986. In Spain, after Franco’s death in 1975, King
Juan Carlos masterminded the establishment of liberal democracy. Spain joined
NATO in 1982, and the EEC together with Portugal in 1986. Ten became twelve.
15. The fourth enlargement involved three prosperous democracies, Austria
(applied in July 1989), Sweden (July 1991), Finland (March 1992). Neutrality and
non-alignment were no longer perceived as impediments to membership of what was
a NATO club – apart from Ireland. On 1 January 1995 twelve became 15.
16. Let us now take stock of this democratic peace-building project as the cold war
came to an end. It had six drivers. First, determination that Europe should never
again destroy itself by war. Second, the Soviet threat had brought erstwhile friends
and foes together under a US led security umbrella. Third, Germans sought to
rehabilitate and reunify their country in a European Germany, not a German
Europe. Fourth, France aimed at leadership of Europe with institutions based on
the French system. When de Gaulle spoke of Europe, he meant France. For many
Italians, government from Brussels was better than government from Rome. Fifth,
the Benelux countries perceived the Commission as the institution that would protect
the interests of smaller countries. The Dutch always wanted to include the UK as
an Atlanticist free trading country. Sixth, there was a broad consensus in favour of
Keynesian economic policies, the need to avoid another great depression, and the
expansion of world trade, including with the EEC’s neighbours in central and Eastern
Europe.
17. Two processes were at work: internally, integration, known as deepening, and
externally, enlargement, known as widening. Both made progress but were
controversial. De Gaulle, opposed to integration and the growing power of the
Commission, paralysed the Community in the mid 1960s with his empty chair policy,
until the “Luxembourg compromise” was worked out. If a member state declared a
vital national interest, a compromise acceptable to that state would be worked out.
Enlargement was controversial too, and not only in the case of Greece. De Gaulle had
opposed enlargement to include the Atlanticist UK. In the 1980s French farmers
worried about cheap Spanish fruit, vegetables and wine. And always there were
claims that widening was the enemy of deepening – the ever closer union.
18. On the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall (on 25 October 1989) President
Mitterrand proposed, at a meeting of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the
idea of a European Bank to respond to the major changes that were taking place in
central and Eastern Europe. With remarkable speed, the agreement to establish the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was ready for signature
by May 1990, while preparations for the second CSCE summit gathered pace in
Vienna. The EBRD began operations in April 1991. Article One of the EBRD’s
charter marks it out as the first post cold war institution. It would assist only those
countries that were committed to, and applying the principles of, multi party
democracy and pluralism.
19. The EC (as it then was) responded in 1989 to developments in Poland and
Hungary, the Warsaw Pact members that were in the vanguard of the movement to
liberal democracy and a market economy, by establishing the Poland and Hungary:
Assistance for Restructuring their Economies (PHARE, the French word for
lighthouse) programme. It was subsequently extended to cover all the central and
Eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. As in Western
Europe, economic means would be used to promote democracy and human rights.
20. By the time the EBRD began operations, in 1991, Germany had been unified and
the Cold War closed down at the second CSCE summit. But how should the
EC develop now? Should there be more widening, more deepening, or both? In
1969 a plan had been drawn up, for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). It was
never implemented, but in 1988, under the chairmanship of Commission president
Jacques Delors, who certainly knew about leadership, EMU was revived. On the
basis of my experience in Frankfurt from 1990-93, I agree with those who say that
Germany agreed to the Euro in return for French acquiescence in unification.
So, twelve member states faced two challenges after the Paris summit, or three if one
includes integrating the GDR, where the economy had collapsed. On the one hand,
preparing for EMU, the most ambitious step yet in terms of integration/deepening.
On the other, dealing with requests for admission from countries such as Poland,
the most ambitious step yet in terms of widening/enlargement. Poland’s GDP per
capita at purchasing power parity in 1991 was $9169, compared with the UK’s
$23542. In 2013 it was $22,513 compared with the UK’s $35,013. Poland is
catching up.
21. In June 1993 the EU agreed that enlargement to include countries such as
Poland was no longer a question of if, but of when, and on what conditions. The
EU prescribed criteria – the Copenhagen criteria - that a state demonstrably had to
meet before accession:
 Stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights
and respect for, and protection of minorities.
 The existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to
cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the EU.
 The ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to
the aims of political, economic and monetary union.
The bar was raised higher a couple of years later by stipulating that candidates had to
be able to transpose European Community legislation into national legislation, and
implement the latter. Extensive programmes of assistance were put in place to enable
candidates to meet these exacting criteria.
22. On 1 November 1993 the Maastricht Treaty entered into force for twelve
member states. It established Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), to
“assert the EU’s identity on the international scene”; including through “Joint
Actions”. The first CFSP Joint Action supported democratic transition in South
Africa. The second supported a French proposal for a Pact on Stability in Europe
that had been proposed in June of that year by the French Prime Minister Edouard
Balladur. It was designed, according to the French government, to promote
cooperation between countries of the former Warsaw Pact which “may
eventually be associated to varying degrees with the European Union”, a far cry
from the not if but when formula in the Copenhagen criteria agreed in the same
month, by the French President. Prospective candidates and countries such as the
UK and Germany suspected a French ploy to slow down enlargement. And with
good reason. Potential candidates were supposed to address first issues concerning
frontiers and minorities, and this at a time when there was war in parts of Former
Yugoslavia. Many issues affecting frontiers, nationalism and minorities had
been swept under the carpet in the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia. Hungarians had
not forgiven France for taking the lead in dismembering their country in the Treaty of
Trianon in 1920. The Czechs feared a critical reappraisal of the expulsion of ethnic
Germans and seizure of their property after World War Two - the Benes degrees which would nowadays be regarded as imposing collective guilt followed by ethnic
cleansing. How were the Baltic States supposed to handle large Russian minorities?
23. The circle was squared by a typical EU compromise. The French conceded
that the Pact could speed up, but not slow down enlargement. Countries such as
the UK and Germany recognised that it contained a very good idea – good
neighbourliness. On this basis the idea of a pact was endorsed at an inaugural
conference in Paris in May 1994. Regional round tables were set up: one for the
Baltic States and Russia, the other for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Frontier change was dropped. The issue was minorities. The OSCE High
Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) – a post created in 1992 stepped in.
The HCNM, the late Max van der Stoel, became in effect the chief negotiator of the
Pact signed in Paris on 21 March 1995 by 52 states, proclaiming “an area of lasting
good neighbourliness and cooperation in Europe”. Responsibility for follow up
was assigned to the OSCE.
24. The COE had drawn up a Framework Convention for the Protection of
National Minorities( FCNM), which entered into force in 1995. There was progress
in relations between Hungary and Slovakia, and Hungary and Romania, but Russia
took a zero sum game approach to the Pact – good for the Balts equals bad for
Russia. There was, and still is, a particular problem in countries such as BiH where
nobody wants to be downgraded from the status of member of a constituent nation, to
member of a national minority. And of course there was an irony in this proposal
emanating from France. Minorities are not recognised under the French constitution.
France has not ratified the FCNM. The US was reluctant to support a project that
had not been invented in Washington, and in 1996 launched an initiative of its own,
the South East Europe Cooperative Initiative (SECI). After the end of the war in BiH,
the EU attempted to extend the Pact to countries such as Serbia and BiH through
the Royaumont –the abbey near Paris where we met in December 1995 – process.
The Stability Pact for South East Europe was launched in 1999, and replaced by
the Regional Cooperation Council based in Sarajevo in 2008.
25. There are lessons to be learned from these initiatives: for the EU, the COE,
NATO and the OSCE. The first and most important is that leverage and incentives
work before a country joins a club. Look at the situation regarding the rule of law
in Russia, which was admitted to the COE in 1996, as indeed was Croatia. Second, a
realistic prospect of EU membership is a powerful incentive to reform. Third,
regional organisations can work together if, but only if there is consensus on a
common objective, and a willingness to eschew turf wars. The EU has started
negotiations on accession with Montenegro and Serbia, but not with the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Greece objects to the name. Five EU member
states – Greece, Slovakia, Romania, Cyprus and Spain - have not recognised Kosovo.
26. The Copenhagen criteria, the Stability Pact and assistance programmes such
as PHARE set the framework for enlargement negotiations. Poland and Hungary
applied to join in 1994, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia in 1995,
the Czech Republic and Slovenia in 1996, Estonia in 1997. Bulgaria and Romania
had more to do to meet the accession criteria than central European countries such as
the Czech Republic.
27. Widening and deepening continued:
 On 1 May 1999 the Amsterdam Treaty entered into force for 15 member
states. It created the post of High Representative to project the EU’s values to
the outside world, and provided for the elaboration of common strategies.
 In 1999 the euro was adopted as an accounting currency.
 On 1 January 2002 coins and banknotes entered into circulation in the six
original signatories of the Treaty of Rome. At purchasing power parity the
Euro zone is now the second largest economy in the world.
 On 1 February 2003 the Nice Treaty entered into force for 15 member states.
In CFSP it prepared the EU for the enlargement of 2004.
 On 12 December 2003 15 member states adopted the European Security
Strategy, “A Secure Europe in a Better World.”
 On 1 May 2004 the largest single expansion of the EU took place with the
accession of seven countries that had been in the Warsaw Pact, plus Slovenia,
Cyprus and Malta. Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007.
 In 2004 the EU launched its Neighbourhood Policy for countries, including
Russia, not part of the enlargement. The EU proposed cooperation with
Russia and others in four “common spaces” identified in the European
Security Strategy:
 1) The Economy; 2) Freedom Security and Justice; 3) External Security; 4)
Research, Education and Culture.
 Membership negotiations with Croatia and Turkey began in 2005. They
were protracted because by then it was evident that Bulgaria and Romania had
received promises of accession by a specific date without due regard to their
actual ability to comply with the Copenhagen criteria. In Croatia’s case
weaknesses in the judiciary, organised crime, and corruption caused concern.
Croatia’s accession on 1 July 2013, when 27 became 28, is likely to be the
last for some time. Negotiations with Turkey are effectively on hold.
 An ambitious integration project, a “Constitution” which would have
replaced existing treaties was rejected in referenda in France and the
Netherlands in 2005.
The EU was gripped by what the Economist
described as “existential angst.” Resolving this crisis took four years.
There was little energy or interest in Brussels or most EU capitals in seizing
opportunities for extending the EU’s influence in Georgia and Ukraine
after the Roses and Orange revolutions, by defining these countries as
potential candidates.
 The crisis was resolved in 2009 by the Lisbon Treaty accepted by 27 states.
It amended existing treaties, a abolished the three-pillar structure, and
enhanced the EU’s legal personality. Negotiations continue on EU accession
to the European Human Rights Convention.
28. For countries such as Poland, Sweden, and the Czech Republic the European
Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) fell short of what was required to bring stability,
democracy and prosperity to its neighbours.
29. The Eastern Partnership (EaP) was launched during the Czech presidency in
May 2009, much to the annoyance of Russia. Foreign Minister Lavrov – who was
not invited to the conference in Prague - perceived “overlap” in the post Soviet
space, and opposed plans for Association Agreements between countries such as
Ukraine and the EU. Matters came to a head at the Vilnius summit in 2013,
precipitating the Maidan protest, which led to the fall and flight of Yanukovich. Nor
was Russia invited to the most recent conference in Riga last month. The
communiqué provided firm backing for Ukraine and Georgia. Respect for
“sovereignty and territorial integrity cannot be taken for granted in the 21 st
century on the European continent. The newly appointed governor of Odessa
Oblast, Miklheil Saakashvili told Georgian media that countries such as Georgia and
Ukraine should join the EU as soon as possible.
30. In the light of developments since the fall of Shevardnadze in December 2003, it
is clear that Putin perceives the EU’s policies in Eastern Europe, especially in
Ukraine, as posing an existential threat, not to Russia of course, but to his
corrupt oligarchic regime. The epitaph for the common neighbourhood is to be
found in the EU Foreign Policy Scorecard for 2014. “Europe was unprepared for
Moscow’s retaliation against Ukraine’s European choice and ill equipped to deal
with Vladimir Putin’s use of force and explicit rejection of the post Cold War
European order.”
Conclusion
31. The EU’s annual “Foreign Policy Scorecard” marks performance from A to D.
For example “Relations with the US on the Balkans and Eastern Europe” get B+ in
the latest assessment, and the response to the immigration crisis in the Mediterranean
only D+. It would be even less now. But the assessment of European Security sums
up well. “The overall security picture in Europe in 2014 saw us going back to the
future. The threat of Russian aggression in Europe’s east has reanimated NATO,
and has even led to increased public consideration of NATO membership in Finland
and Sweden, a debate hardly imaginable two years ago. Europe was unprepared for
Ukraine’s European choice. Policies were based on illusions.” So, for EU foreign
policy coordination the challenge is reminiscent of 1973 – how to live in peace with
a large and troublesome neighbour.