The Conference “The Democratic control of the European Foreign, security and defense policy”, was organized by the . Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) – TEPSA.
Following the transformations in the process of European integration triggered by the Treaty of Maastricht, a contentious debate has started over the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. Even though this debate has focused mainly on Community activities, it has recently been extended to the instruments and procedures of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The debate over the democratic control of foreign, security and defence policy, that has revolved among other things on the level where this control should be situated (national, EU or transnational parliamentary bodies), has acquired a renewed importance and urgency following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. On the one hand, the creation of new figures and bodies, and especially the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the European External Action Service (EEAS), creates new opportunities for the European Parliament to control European foreign and security policy. On the other hand, on 31 March WEU members decided to terminate the founding Treaty and wind up the organisation and its bodies and on that occasion also called for the enhancement of dialogue among national parliaments in order to ensure an appropriate parliamentary control of European security and defence policy.
Several TEPSA researchers have examined this issue of democratic control on EU’s foreign and security policy more in depth in three papers that have been presented during the seminar. We would like to discuss their findings with you. The seminar has dealt with the following topics:
Session 1. The saliency of the issue of the democratic control of European foreign, security and defence policy.
Paper by: Graham Avery, Senior Member of St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and Honorary Member of the Board, TEPSA; and Gunilla Herolf, Senior Researcher, SIPRI, Stockholm, and Member of the Board, TEPSA
Session 2. The level of democratic parliamentary control: national, transnational or European?
Paper by: Hanna Ojanen, Director of research, SIIA, Stockholm, and Member of the Board, TEPSA
Session 3. The Lisbon Treaty and the powers of the European Parliament in the democratic control of CFSP-CSDP
Paper by: Michele Comelli, Senior Fellow, IAI, Rome
The conference has been held on Monday 15 November 2010 from 10.30 to 16.00 at the European Parliament and was organised in cooperation with the Polish Delegation EPP/ the Member of the European Parliament Jacek Saryusz-Wolski.
The Final report from the conference is available at this link.