On November 19, 1970, Europe's novel experiment in regional economic integration quietly delved into uncharted territory. In Munich, at the former Prussian embassy to the Kingdom of Bavaria, European Union (EU) foreign ministers met for the first time under the rubric of a new institutional framework, “European Political Cooperation” (EPC). This meeting represented the latest in a long series of efforts to coordinate the foreign policies of EU member states in areas other than economic affairs. The EU's previous attempts to coordinate such policies, such as the European Defense Community and the European Political Community of the 1950s, and the Fouchet Plans of the 1960s, had failed miserably because of fundamental disagreements about the means and ends of European foreign policy cooperation. Thanks to this legacy, EPC was greeted with considerable uncertainty and skepticism when the EU foreign ministers met in Munich. The meeting aroused little public attention, and EPC participants themselves expected the profound differences in their foreign policy traditions, domestic political cultures, administrative capacities, and global relationships to inhibit their attempts to find a collective voice in world politics.

In addition, not only was EPC's scope of action so indeterminate that it threatened to invite more conflict than cooperation, but its mechanisms to induce such cooperation were feeble and peculiar. It was not based on a treaty, nor did it have any permanent organizational machinery. Its rules were extremely vague and its instruments for collective action few.

The SEA represented a significant step forward for European foreign policy, yet the EU, like much of the world, was caught off-guard by the momentous events of 1989–91, beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall and ending with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. There is no doubt these exogenous changes prompted major reforms in a number of institutions, including NATO, the EU, the WEU, and the CSCE, and helped create entirely new ones, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Keohane, Nye, and Hoffman 1993). However, it is also clear that the specific institutional reforms of EU foreign policy resulting from these events largely reflected endogenous, path-dependent processes. Rather than a decisive break with the past, the CFSP represented a natural, logical progression by both clarifying what had been achieved through EPC and building only a few truly innovative goals and procedures onto that mechanism. Virtually all elements of EPC described in previous chapters were affected, and they clearly laid the foundation for the CFSP at Maastricht.

Yet a closer examination of both the treaty-based provisions of the CFSP and its early performance suggests that European foreign policy has in fact reached a new level of institutionalization. In particular, we can describe this evolution as moves toward a system of governance, broadly defined for the moment as the authority to make, implement, and enforce rules in a specified policy domain.

European foreign policy cooperation has expanded considerably since the first tentative steps made under EPC in the early 1970s. Compared to the situation then, the CFSP today involves a far more sophisticated institutional structure and has produced a greater variety of complex common foreign policy actions. Moreover, compared to other regional organizations, such as the Organization of American States or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EU's progressive and determined efforts to cooperate in foreign policy are highly unique. Despite these positive results, however, many observers and EU officials remain dissatisfied with the CFSP's procedural elements and its substantive output. We can describe these limitations as part of the “unfinished business” of the Maastricht era, where certain issues were raised but ultimately sidestepped owing to both general political differences and more specific questions about institutional architecture. These issues have intensified the pressures for institutional change since the late 1990s and deserve some attention here, given the EU's own growing ambitions and the major challenges faced by the CFSP since its implementation.

This chapter explores these difficult institutional questions, focusing in particular on the EU's goal to make its external relations functions more coherent. Improving the effectiveness and coherence of the EU's external capabilities was a key motivation behind the TEU and its single institutional framework. As we saw in the previous chapter, substantive coherence in the CFSP has clearly improved compared to EPC.

Foreign and security policy cooperation has long been one of the most ambitious goals of those who favor a more united Europe, yet the original mechanism to achieve this goal, European Political Cooperation, was vague in its scope and severely limited in terms of institutional design. By the time of the Treaty on European Union twenty years later, however, the limited “talking shop” of EPC had been formally institutionalized into a legally binding policymaking process capable of producing common positions and joint actions on a wide range of global problems. Today virtually no major foreign policy issue goes unexamined by the EU, and cooperation is under serious consideration in related areas such as security and defense. How can we explain this cooperation, and in what ways did institutionalization affect EU foreign policymaking? The key challenge here is to understand the various processes by which an informal, extra-legal, ad hoc, improvised system gradually fostered the achievement of cooperative outcomes and progressively enhanced its own procedures to improve the prospects for those outcomes.

As much of this activity took place outside the institutions and procedures of the European Community, an explanation of EU foreign policy may benefit from more general explanations of institutional development rather than other theories, such as functionalism, specifically developed to explain European economic integration. This means taking into account the reciprocal links between institutional development and the propensity of states to cooperate to achieve joint gains.

The previous chapter argued that institutionalization promotes international cooperation and suggested several general causes of institutionalization, but did not offer precise empirical measurements of either institutionalization or cooperation. This chapter attempts to operationalize these concepts and apply them to the historical record to justify further the merits of an institutional analysis of EPC/CFSP. Although my institutional approach to cooperation is not as parsimonious as theories that focus on single causes (such as the interests of powerful EU member states) or events (such as Intergovernmental Conferences), it has the potential to capture equally important, though subtle, processes concerning the development of EU foreign policy. Institutionalization is often a contentious political process, yet with every major setback the EU has attempted to strengthen its foreign policy procedures to improve the chances of future cooperation. In general, the relationship between institutions and individual foreign policy outcomes will vary over time and across specific foreign policy actions, depending on the costs, states, and EU organizations and policies involved. However, if institutions “matter” we still should at least be able to observe a general intensification and expansion of EU foreign policy cooperation as its institutional mechanisms expand and stabilize.

EPC provides us with an interesting and theoretically useful example of such institutional development, as it began as an informal, extra-legal agreement among EU member states in an ill-defined issue-area.

Hamilton's concise case for replacing the weak Articles of Confederation with a federal union of the American states helped inspire support for ratification of the US Constitution. Over two hundred years later his argument seems increasingly pertinent to the debate over European integration. The links between European economic and political objectives, both internal and external, are now extremely difficult to disentangle, and EU foreign/security policy coordination represents a major achievement for a regional economic organization. However, although a union of some unique type, federal or otherwise, may ultimately result from these efforts, I have instead framed this study in terms of cooperation among independent, sovereign states. For European states remain the ultimate locus of authority in developing the EU's institutional future, which has involved a variety of complex behaviors since the 1970s: bargaining, information-sharing, leadership, the establishment of formal organizations, the generation of norms, and delegation to technical specialists. The EU continues to strengthen its intergovernmental elements during key episodes of institutional reform, and EU states still must approve, tacitly or explicitly, any major expansion of EU competencies, such as the ESDP .

Given the vague provisions of the Luxembourg Report it rapidly became clear that EPC's participants would have to improvise their cooperation. As we have seen, although senior government officials played a leading role during EPC's formative years, even then the system involved an embryonic lower-level infrastructure – the Political Committee, European Correspondents, and working groups – to assist foreign ministers with foreign policy coordination. Fundamentally, EPC at this time was little more than a system of “regular exchanges of information and consultation” on “great international problems,” primarily involving periodic summits among EU member governments. This aspect of European foreign policy reflects one of the most fundamental functions of institutions: information-sharing. As May (1984) has pointed out, perspective-taking alone cannot always enable actors to predict each other's behaviors, and predictable behavior is the essence of cooperation. In a world of uncertainty regarding the behavior of states, institutional mechanisms that make it easier for states to communicate with each other are highly valued.

The cooperation-inducing effects of regular communication can vary, ranging from confidence-building (at a minimum) to providing a shared understanding of, and potential solutions to, certain problems (at a maximum). However, there can be an enormous amount of variation regarding the ends and means of communication. With respect to EU foreign policy, I stress four aspects of communication: the actors involved, the types of information they share, the channels through which this information is shared, and the effects of that communication on cooperation and institution-building.

The Luxembourg and Copenhagen Reports clearly laid the foundations for intensive information-sharing about foreign policy among EU member states. Yet we can say much more about the relationship between institutionalized communication and international cooperation than those who view cooperation as one-shot deals or quid pro quo contracts. When patterns of communication persist and become increasingly complex and dense, whether by accident or design, the demand for common standards of behavior may grow as actors continue to engage one another. The emergence of these standards, or norms, takes collective behavior to a higher level of institutionalization by translating general values or ideas into specific behavior patterns. In the case of EU foreign policy, norms helped EPC progress from a passive forum or talking shop to a more active, collective, foreign policymaking mechanism. This occurred despite the fact that EU governments continued to claim the right to maintain their sovereignty and flexibility over foreign policy and often rejected the formal legalization of their cooperation in this domain.

The specific processes involved in this transition are the subject of this chapter. As I proposed in Chapter 2, norm development can be conceived in terms of several steps: (1) the emergence of informal (uncodified) customs, or the (often unspoken) traditions and practices that emerged in day-to-day interactions among EPC officials; (2) the codification or ordering of these informal customs into explicit, written norms; (3) the transition from explicit norms to rules (rights and obligations), as reflected in EPC reports; and (4) the transition from rules into formal laws (legal rules), which involve behavioral and legal obligations.

In search of eurofonctionnaires

A Commission without ready access (at least until 4 or 5 pm) to cappuccino, espresso, or lemon tea – and fresh croissants or Danish pastries – would be difficult to imagine. The cafeteria, often tucked away in a corner of the building, serves as an escape valve in an intense work environment, where officials unwind with political commentaries, playful flirtation, and culturally tinged pleasantries. French is still the dominant social language, though this is changing rapidly with English on the upswing. Yet old-timers claim that social gatherings have become increasingly mono-national: Spanish meet Spanish, Irish socialize with Irish, and so forth. The cafeteria is also a desirable location for informal work meetings. At any point during the day, one may observe a group of four to six officials sharing jokes or opinions with their chef d'unité (head of unit). Sometimes it is easier to vent frustration or air new ideas in the friendly and neutral setting of the cafeteria.

The occasional visitor may not pick up subtle differences between these two types of gatherings. A closer look reveals telling contrasts. Whereas social gatherings are usually genuinely egalitarian, work meetings are shaped by a fair dose of hierarchy. This is, after all, a public administration – and, in theory, one built on Weberian principles of organization. More remarkable still are the differences in the composition of these groups. The former gatherings are often nationally monocultural, but the latter always consist of different nationalities.

Between June 1995 and February 1997 I conversed with 137 directors-general, deputy directors-general, directors, and senior advisors of the European Commission in semi-structured interviews lasting on average 79 minutes. I also asked them to mail back a structured questionnaire containing behavioral and attitudinal questions. By May 1997, I had received 106 mail questionnaires. These interviews and mail questionnaires provide the empirical basis for this book. I elaborate below five important elements in this research: the context, the organization, sampling, interviewing, and the people.

The context

The European Union is at a crossroads between 1995 and 1997. Its future is deeply contested and uncertain, and yet Europe's elites, if not its citizens, seem determined to integrate deeper and faster. Three major issues dominate the headlines and structure the daily dealings of top Commission officials: economic and monetary union (EMU) – at first, the plan's survival, and, later, the conditions of implementation; the ban from the European internal market of British beef infected by BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy – “mad cow disease”); and preparations for the 1996–7 intergovernmental conference, which would culminate in the 1999 Amsterdam Treaty. Two deeper concerns cloud EU politics during that period. Public opinion polls register a rapid rise in public dissatisfaction with European integration, and, on the economic front, most European countries suffer from persistently high unemployment whereas the US economy is booming. This is the political background against which I probe top Commission officials' basic preferences on EU governance.