Conceptualizing the European Union’s Global Role

Abstract

The end of the twentieth century witnessed yet another turning point in the development of the EU’s global role. The longstanding gulf between Atlantic and Continental-centred models of European security was tentatively bridged. The United Kingdom, as the pre-eminent Atlanticist power in Europe, had long insisted that European and transatlantic security was a seamless whole that would be weakened by any self-conscious effort to define European security outside the context of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. French policymakers, by contrast, insisted that while the Alliance was crucial, Europe had to provide for its own security and then establish a true Atlantic partnership with the United States, a partnership predicated upon equality.