Brussels, 26/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - Delivering the Hendrik Brugmans Memorial Lecture, organised by the Madariaga Foundation, which he chairs, the EU's High Representative for Cfsp, Javier Solana Madariaga stressed the progress achieved by the "EU foreign policy", while noting it remains a "common policy", which is not the same thing as a "single" European foreign policy. He then added: "Foreign Policy is not the Single Market. The legal framework of Cfsp (…) has developed from experience (…) (…). Cfsp can never be prescriptive (…) That is why I spend as little of my time as possible worrying about theory or institutional issues - though theoretical and institutional introspection is an ever-present occupational hazard for anyone working within the EU institutions". As for the "security" dimension of Cfsp, Solana noted that, today, actions in which Europe is called on to participate are "less dependent on traditional military intervention", and that Article V (collective defence) "is less relevant to the majority of crisis situations which confront us these days". Many of these new situations "are limited politically and geographically", and not all NATO member States "may feel that they have a direct interest in responding to all crisis situations", he observed.
In addition, Solana made a point of stressing that the European Commission has a "vital role to play if our Foreign Policy is to have an impact", and many "key" instruments are in its hands. He then went on: "That is why I am sorry that I often disappoint journalists by underlining the excellent cooperation which I enjoy with Romano Prodi, Chris Patten, Gunther Verheugen, Pascal Lamy and the whole Commission team (…) What I do was in general not being done before either by the Commission or the Council. The very purpose behind the creation of the post of High Representative was to set in motion policies and activities in areas where the EU was previously either inactive or irrelevant as an actor. In that sense, it fills an institutional vacuum". (On the subject of the Hendrik Brugmans Memorial Lecture, see EUROPE of 19 April, p.4).