State of Affairs and Definition

Today the EU is like a sleeping peace-power between the deficit of sovereignty, pressure of cohesion and world order. Formal sovereignty and pure additional national foreign policies of the member states block or obstruct the conditions of developing the international system and especially the sustainable construction of homogeneous, autonomous and efficient EU- Foreign and security policy. This encourages the absence of any kind of serious quality to be a participant in the international system.

What applies fundamentally applies also and especially to the EU: no state, not even the largest and/ or most powerful state, can actualize and implement the full measure of their foreign policy in total independence. Therefore, it is necessary to build up a ‘European Foreign Policy Governance Regime’ in order to position the EU upon a basis of a clearly identified, synchronizing vision and will as well as homogeneous systems of decision-making and interaction. In this way, the EU is to be established as an authentic and dynamic player in the interdependence of the international system.

While the foreign policies of EU-member states keep their direct individual and bilateral interests, the European foreign policy simultaneously forces the implementation of the common and holistic interests. In acceptance of the principal of subsidiarity and the logic of substantial sovereignty, the European Foreign Policy synchronizes the internal structures and simultaneously facilitates the multilateral relationships as a homogenous and strategic driving force in the international system.

Vision and Volition

Europe’s basic ideas and the substantial visions of living a life in peace, respect for human rights, wealth and free development are basically established: peaceful change and balancing of interests as well as the human dignity and principals of a constitutional state have become an indisposable reality. This unique performance in world history established the fundament for the ‘peace model of Europe’, however, but only internally. A qualified substantial external reflection is lacking. This kind of performance is now to be externally replicated, envisioned, offered and actively communicated as a global peace model. After the political failings of the 20th century, the internal peace performance of the EU is a referential proof and blueprint for peace creating and peace keeping procedures, which are actively and powerfully to be introduced in the international system.

The precondition of the creative and visionary power of European Foreign Policy is founded in a clear will, deducted from the internal political determination and guiding principals of governance-systems, being innovatively and transformationally positioned in the international order.

Determination and Predestination

Quality and magnitude of the European foreign policy determination are decisive for the degree of European diplomacy’s and international system’s governance. Out of the correlation between the internal peace performance and the perception of the international system, the determination and basic substance of the European Foreign Policy program is being founded: multilateralism, supra-nationalism and universalism on the basis of strict adherence to subsidiarity and governance regimes creating structures.

This system of innovative diplomacy functions, the European governance peace-regime, is to be ‘exported’, i.e., to communicate this offer with other equivalent international regimes including governmental and civil-societies’ structures. Hereby, the European ‘peace model’ would be taken as a guideline for systematic internalisation of the diversity of cultures and being concentrated on the mechanism of multilateral dialog and balancing systems of cooperation and participation. By that, the multilateral interdependencies would be coordinated and integrated in supranational dialog-regimes and sustainably transformed by governance regime creation. The determination towards this kind of service offering by the transformation of the ‘EU peace model’ then automatically also includes all the functions and solutions of early warning and crisis and conflict prevention mechanisms.

The actual conditions of the world, as well as the challenges of reforming the world order, demand the European capacities of being a successfully synchronizing and substantially forming peace power. This already existing capacity as a developing peace power, based on real and ideal policy, identifies and predestines the EU to be a strategic driving force in the international order.

This target of the EU to be established and globally positioned as a leading peace power is only to be guaranteed by active and effective synchronisation and sovereignty. Then, the most convincing performance and proof for being recognized as a true global peace model is to activate an internally integrated player functioning: the implementation of an EU Foreign Policy Governance Regimes.

(Quoted from 'EU FOREIGN POLICY – VOLITION AND IMAGINATION OF GLOBAL INTERACTION - Peace-Power between Deficit of Sovereignty and Challenges of World Order Reformation', J. Michael Heynen, Brussels, http://www.eufpc.org/news.htm)