Fifty Years of EC/EU External Relations: Continuity and the Dialogue Between Judges and Member States as Constitutional Legislators

First, the progressive development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (“CFSP”) and European Security and Defense Policy (“ESDP”) in the successive Treaty amendments will be sketched in its character as heritage of the French Fouchet Plan of 1961-62. Second, the idea of a dialogue between the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) and the Member States as constitutional law-givers will be sketched in greater detail. This presumably will enable us to recognize some kind of continuity in these developments and the final question to be answered will be whether this continuity is also apparent in the considerably amended provisions on external relations of the Reform Treaty