Renationalizing or regrouping? EU foreign policy since 11 September 2001

This article considers whether the most recent phase of European foreign policy-making, since the atrocity of 11 September, has exposed fatal flaws in the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), or whether it is too soon for dismissive judgements. It asks to what extent Member States have fallen back on their own resources, and to what extent there are signs of regrouping, so as to take the CFSP on to the next stage. It examines the main substantive challenges which have preoccupied Europe since 11 September, some of the key foreign policy issues which predated but then became complicated by it, and finally the more structural issues such as the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), the Convention on constitutional reform, and enlargement. It concludes that the current crisis is not rendering European foreign policy redundant, and that there continues to be the will, if not always the capacity, to produce collective action.