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FIRST ZAGREB EXECUTIVE SUMMARY EUROPEAN SECURITY: DEVELOPMENT AND PRACTICE OF THE FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) Executive Summary 1. The post World War I settlement failed to ensure lasting peace. Statesmen such as Jean Monnet (France), were much more successful after World War II. The Soviet threat, manifest in Stalin’s blockade of Berlin in 1948-49, brought erstwhile enemies together. By 1958 Europe had three effective regional organisations: Council of Europe (1949, rule of law, democracy and human rights), NATO (1949, security), European Economic Community (1958, prosperity). Paras 1-8. 2. Construction of the Berlin Wall (1961) prompted new thinking. The Soviet Union accepted the US presence in Europe, and sought to consolidate its hold on Eastern Europe through a pan-European Security Conference. NATO decided to embark on dialogue with the Warsaw Pact. West Germany renounced force as a means of changing the status quo. As pan-European security negotiations began in 1973, EEC political cooperation focussed on human rights, the “Third Basket” of the Helsinki Final Act (HFA) of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, signed at the first CSCE summit in 1975. The HFA became the benchmark for Western human rights work in countries such as Romania. Paras 9-12. 3. EEC enlargement had begun with the UK, Ireland and Denmark (1973) followed by Greece (1981), Portugal and Spain (1986), Sweden, Austria, and Finland (1995). The objective was to spread peace, prosperity, and respect for human rights, while at the same time achieving closer integration. But there were tensions between the advocates of integration and enlargement. Paras 13-17. 4. In 1990, after the Cold War had been closed down in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe at the second CSCE summit, the EU decided on further integration through political, economic, and monetary union (the Euro), the development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and, in 1993, on enlargement in Central and Eastern Europe, achieved in 2004. Programmes of assistance to transition countries were put in place. But, less than one year after the CSCE summit, war in Former Yugoslavia, and minority tensions elsewhere, were tarnishing the principles of peace and cooperation set forth in the Paris Charter. On the basis of a French initiative, originally designed to slow down enlargement, the EU (through a CFSP Joint Action), the OSCE (through the High Commissioner on National Minorities), and the Council of Europe (through a Minorities Framework Convention) worked to promote stability and good neighbourly relations in Central and Eastern Europe. EU support and incentives worked best in countries that had a realistic prospect of membership. Controversy over a proposed constitution forced the EU to look inwards during the Rose and Orange revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. Paras 19-27. 5. Member states such as Poland and Sweden, considered that the EU was not doing enough to bring countries such as Ukraine closer to the EU, while Russia objected to EU – and NATO - encroachment on the post Soviet space. EU policies towards Russia, a troublesome neighbour, have been based on illusions. Paras 28-31.