A Shielded Republic: The European Union 1957–2010 (original) (raw)

2011

Abstract

For most of its history the European Union has been identified with peace and presented itself in the character of a civilian power. Its main activities have been peaceful ones, such as trade, industry, finance, labour markets (after 1992) social policy, the environment and the promotion of democracy. The introduction of a foreign and security policy in 1992 and a security and defence policy later in the decade were controversial and seen as alien additions to the European project. While the EU as a security actor is new, it has always been a security system. However, it has been unusual to identify the EU as a form of rule for which security has always been central (Sangiovanni and Verdier 2005). Part of the problem is conceptual. Modern political science has coded security and defence as the remit of the unitary state. Since the EU does not resemble such an entity, how could it be concerned with security? The institutional distinctness between the EU and the unitary state has been fused with the state-centred narrative of formation of order in European history reviewed in Chapter 2. For example, Marks (1997) claims that “[s] tates were created in war, the European Union in peace.”

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