{"title":"The European union's common foreign policy: the role of the commission in an “intergovernmental” process","authors":"M. Holland","doi":"10.1080/02589349708705045","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The importance of South Africa's relations with the European Union (EU) is well established. What is perhaps less well understood is the complexity that underlays the foreign policy‐making process within the EU. South Africa's own form of consultation and consensus style of decision‐making, albeit extensive by nation‐state standards, pails when confronted by the multi‐layered process of foreign policy‐making in the EU. The current negotiations between South Africa and the European Union over the “free trade” versus “development and trade” options makes this study of Europe's foreign policy making process both timely and important. To understand the present negotiations it is useful to examine the more recent past, in particular the 1993–4 EU joint action that has been instrumental in shaping contemporary policy. It is more than twenty five years since Henry Kissinger drew attention to what remains an unresolved problem by asking the question – who speaks for Europe in foreign affairs? The establi...","PeriodicalId":81644,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Commonwealth political studies","volume":"44 1","pages":"5-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1997-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Commonwealth political studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02589349708705045","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
ABSTRACT The importance of South Africa's relations with the European Union (EU) is well established. What is perhaps less well understood is the complexity that underlays the foreign policy‐making process within the EU. South Africa's own form of consultation and consensus style of decision‐making, albeit extensive by nation‐state standards, pails when confronted by the multi‐layered process of foreign policy‐making in the EU. The current negotiations between South Africa and the European Union over the “free trade” versus “development and trade” options makes this study of Europe's foreign policy making process both timely and important. To understand the present negotiations it is useful to examine the more recent past, in particular the 1993–4 EU joint action that has been instrumental in shaping contemporary policy. It is more than twenty five years since Henry Kissinger drew attention to what remains an unresolved problem by asking the question – who speaks for Europe in foreign affairs? The establi...