Lisbon and the CSDP

Since its establishment, the European Community (EC) later known as European Union (EU) was gradually given powers by its member states to allow it conduct international affairs on its own, given its own international legal status under international law (Wessel, 1997) this legal status was achieved through reforms done by major treaties which gave the EU more powers than any international organization would ever dream of, therefore, there has always existed two vying views, intergovernmentalism vs. supranationalism, that played crucial roles in the development of the EU. The 2007 Lisbon Treaty which came into force on 1 December 2009 is one of these crucial treaties that determined the future of the EU that gave it more supranational role (Sela, 2010). The treaty was preceded by two major events; the rejection of the Constitutional treaty and the enlargement of the members of the EU to 27 member states. As a result, the Lisbon treaty was intended to realize some reforms in decision making and institutional relations between the EU institutions and between the member states (Sela, 2010). The rejection of the Consutitional treaty came as a result of negative votes in both the French and Dutch referandums on the ratification of the treaty (Piris, 2010, p. 24). Yet this failure did not stop the need for a treaty with an institution wide reforms that aim at fixing some impediments that stand infront the functioning of the EU.

The Lisbon treaty follows a series of preceding treaties which aimed at the development of the EU, the purpose of the Lisbon treaty was to make the EU more “effective democratic and transparent” (Sela, 2010, p. 50), one way to achieve this is through a european parliament. After the 1957 Rome treaty which aimed at creating a customs union with a common agricultural policy, the Parliamentary Assembly was modified to be elected not by member state representatives but by universal suffrage, with the 1982 Single European Act, this assembly was renamed as the European Parliament (EP) (Piris, 2010).

 1992 Maastricht treaty, after the end of the Cold War era, brought further major advances it “enlarged the scope of action of the EC (the first pillar), It also added two further pillars: The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Justice and Home Affairs (JHA)” (Piris, 2010, p. 8). The treaty also introduced the “co-decision procedure” gave the European Parliament (EP) an increased say on the EU budget and legislation (Piris, 2010). The EP gained more power with the following 1997 Amsterdam Treaty when “the ‘codecision’ procedure being modified to put the European Parliament on an almost equal footing as the Council to adopt legislation in some areas” (Piris, 2010, p. 9). With the 2001 Nice treaty, it paved the way for the EU to be able to include further more member states into the union, this was done by reconsidering the voting procedure of the member states in the Council and limiting the size of the Commision and also giving more power to the EP by “extending to new areas its [the EP] right of codeciding legislative Acts with the Council” (Piris, 2010, p. 9). Such developments created a lot of dissatisfaction by the member states, furthermore, a more crucial point was the falling enthuiasm of the European citizens towards European integration (Piris, 2010). Therefore, it was seen that a crucial treaty was needed as a remedy for consequent impediments that befell the EU with time, and as stated above, the rejection of the consitutional treaty did not stop the EU for another try. The Lisbon treaty brought changes to the whole institutional bodies of the EU, however, in the following some of these changes will be examined, later the paper will assess the nature of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) afterwards.

First of all, understanding Lisbon treaty is very difficult due to its complexity, probably this can be attributed to the fact that it was an “unexpected treaty” after the failure of the constitutional treaty (Phinnemore, 2013, p. 211), therefore, most of the content of the treaty were adopted from the constitutional treaty, yet in order for the Lisbon treaty to have a better chance of success and not to face the same fate of its predecessor treaty, it had to do the same job that previous treaties did which is to amend preceding treaties unlike the constitutional treaty which aimed at replacing the previous treaties with a single one (Piris, 2010). Therefore, in regards to the EP, national parliaments regained their direct involvement in consultations about the decision taken in the EU, yet this does not diminish the powers the EP got throughout previous decades, instead:

“European Parliament will have a say over the European funds for third countries and will control the budget of the ESEA. As a direct effect of the right to exercise a politically control over the CFSP, the EP has also get the right to proceed to the hearing of the EU ambassadors, after their appointment. When the High Representative could not be present at a plenary session of the Parliament, she/he could be replaced by a commissioner or a national Foreign Affairs Commissioner” (Dumitrescu, Stoica, & Popa, 2014).

Furthermore, while Masstrich treaty established EU citizenship as being complementary to national citizenship, Lisbon treaty establishes EU citizenship as being additional to national citizenship; that is one must have a citizenship from an EU member state in order to be able to have an EU citizenship (Sela, 2010).

Of importance is the issue of security in relation with crisis management. In 1998, the Franco-British summit in Saint Malo gave birth to the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), this vision of a European defence came after the plight of the Bosnian crisis and Euro-American differences on the issue (Grand, 2013; Hynek, 2011). However, the EU was did not fully become a military player until the Lisbon treaty with the reconiguration of the ESDP into the CSDP. perhaps this reconfiguration is better illustrated with the following:

“…the complex system established between 1999 and 2010, which brings together the High Representative and the European External Action Service (EEAS), the Political and Security Committee (PSC) enshrining the role of EU Member States in CFSP and CSDP, and the military dimension composed of the EU Military Committee (EUMC), composed of the Chiefs of Staff of the Member States or their representatives, which gives military advice to the PSC and EU Military Staff(EUMS), which provides expertise and military support. The European Defence Agency (EDA) is also established as a tool for capability development, research and development in the field of armaments and technology” (Grand, 2013).

Nevertheless, such major development still carry some deficits. Though the treaty aimed at increasing the coherence and efficiency of the decision-making processes, still the security and defence policy remain untouched (Hynek, 2011). Decisions with military and defense implications still require unanimity, rather than being decided upon through qualified majority voting (QMV).

A further development is the creation of the position of the High Representative of the Union who will be responsible for the CFSP and common defense policy, will also lead the Council of foreign ministers and is the vice president of the commision repsonsible for international relations (Sela, 2010),  this position will be assisted with European External Action Services (EEAS) in order to “ensure the consistency of the Union’s external action” (Hynek, 2011, p. 83). One of the crucial aspects of the EEAS is its importance for the strengthening of the CSDP and success of its operations, this importance lies in its inclusion of staff from member states to increase “vertical-coherence” of CSDP decision-making (Hynek, 2011).

However, though much focus has been asserted on coherence, empirical assessments of the EU CSDP does not bear fruit as Grand (2013) points out to some crucial implications; first political-military ambitions must not be high as its military capabilities fall short; since 1998 the EU has been asserting an objective of deploying a “credible military force” and it has failed ever since, “the initial capability goal has not been reached. Of 1.6 million European soldiers, only 20% are considered deployable and only a few thousand are actually engaged in operations that range from national or EU to NATO or UN missions” (p. 12). Second, the problem of visbility, the CSDP external action seems as if it is non-existent, this attributed to two reasons; one is the reluctance of member states and EU institutions from publising their participation in a military dimension of the organization, two is due to the trauma after the constitutional treaty failure and instistence of member states from removing anything related to “flag” or “anthem” (Grand, 2013).

Apart from that, a crucial point which was pointed out to in Marin & Ferreira-Pereira (2012) is the lack of CSDP’s missions impact on the EU’s counter-terrorism framework. They point out to a crucial aspect in this regard to the lack of CSDP’s missions which is “the absence of EU leverage for carrying out more demanding objectives on security affairs” (2012, p. 549), this absence is attributed to the implication that QMV create on decision-making regarding CSDP missions.

In conclusion, Lisbon treaty had huge impact on the course of EU evolution. The treaty itself was not intended but was a result of crisis calculation after the failure of the constitutional treaty, and this explains why such policy implcations are accompainy with the emplemenation of the treaty. In regards to the CSDP, the treaty helped bring about major developments, however lack of intent among the member states and EU responsibles regarding CSDP missions may not be attributed to the treaty itself, however, the implications that result out from the QMV stand as a barrier in front of effective counter-terrorism measures.

References

Dumitrescu, C. S., Stoica, M. M., & Popa, M. (2014). European Institutional Developments and Evolutions Post-Lisbon Treaty. Fundaţia Societatea Civilă, 180-181, 130-137.

Grand, C. (2013). CSDP: Is There a Next Chapter? The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs, 22(3), 9-18.

Hynek, N. (2011). EU crisis management after the Lisbon Treaty: civil–military coordination and the future of the EU OHQ. European Security, 20(1), 81-102.

Martin, B. O., & Ferreira-Pereira, L. C. (2012). Stepping inside? CSDP missions and EU counter-terrorism. European Security, 21(4), 537-556.

Phinnemore, D. (2013). The Treaty of Lisbon: Origins and Negotiation. London: Palgrave.

Piris, J.-C. (2010). The Lisbon Treaty: A Legal and Political Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sela, Y. (2010). Lisbon Treaty. Academicus International Scientific Journal, 2010(1), 49-59.

Wessel, R. A. (1997). The International Legal Status of the European Union. European Foreign Affairs Review, 2(1), 109-129.