"The EU ‘neutrals,’ the CFSP and defence policy"

The European Union (EU) is trying to develop a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). According to the Treaty on European Union (TEU), or Maastricht Treaty, the CFSP "shall include all questions related to the security of the Union, including the eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence" (art. J. 4). The purpose of this paper is to study this defence dimension of the EU, in particular the attitudes of the EU’s ‘neutral’ member states. When the TEU was negotiated there was one ‘neutral’ state, viz. Ireland. But the latest enlargement added three ‘neutral’ member states, viz. Austria, Finland, and Sweden. These ‘neutral’ countries are neither members of NATO nor the Western European Union (WEU). Further, at least two other member states which are members of NATO, the UK and Denmark, have been skeptical about developing the EU’s defence dimension. While the UK is a member of the WEU, Denmark is not. Both have been ‘minimalists’ in respect to the EU’s defence dimension, emphasising the primacy of NATO