537 Natividad Fernández Sola The proposed reform of the european external actions service and its implications for the european union‘s security policy THE PROPOSED REFORM OF THE EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTIONS SERVICE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION‘S SECURITY POLICY 1: INTRODUCTION One of the areas in which the Lisbon Treaty on the European Union, in effect since December 1st 2009, amended the Treaties of Rome of 1957 and the Treaty of the European Union of 1991 was in Foreign Policy and European Security. Among the new provisions, article 27.3 TUE provided for the establishment of a High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and a European External Actions Service (EEAS). This represented the culmination of a long process of institutional reform of European foreign policy, that had started out with the formalisation, in 1970, of European Political Cooperation, its later institutionalisation in the Single European Act of 1987 and its transformation into an EU intergovernmental cornerstone of Common Foreign and Security Policy with the Maastricht Treaty which came into force in 1993. This new arrival in the institutional make-up of the EU aroused much expectation1 in terms of the realism of the concept, in foreseeing its close cooperation with the diplomatic services of the Member States and with a composition of officials drawn from both the Council and the Commission as well as staff seconded from the Member States’ diplomatic corps. The idea was to put an end to the multitude of centres where European external action had been formulated and put into action2. It was the fruit of a complex and fragmented constitutional structure; but one which at the same time allowed for significant participation from the Member States, which are generally 1 * FERNÁNDEZ SOLA, Natividad, “El Servicio de Acción Exterior de la Unión Europea », DT R.I.Elcano nº 46/2008, 10.11.2008. See also ALDECOA LUZÁRRAGA, Francisco (coord.), La diplomacia común europea. El Servicio Europeo de Acción Exterior, Madrid, Marcial Pons ed., 2011 and CORNAGO, Noé, GUINEA, Mercedes (coords.), Revista Cuadernos Europeos of Deusto, Monographic nº 44, 2011. 2 Up to 22 European bodies had an input of some kind in the foreign and common security policy, according to Howorth and Le Gloannec; a situation which leads them to recognise the institutional logic of the creation of the EEAS. HOWORTH, Jolyon and LE GLOANNEC, Anne-Marie, “The Institutional Logic behind the EEAS”, in European Policy Center, “The EU Foreign service: How to build a More Effective Foreign Policy?”, EPC Working Paper n.28, 2007, pp.28-34.
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