Areas of Grey: Tensions in EU External Relations Competences

The EU’s competences in external relations are shared between the European Community and the more intergovernmental ‘pillars’ on which the Union rests. This is most obvious in the case of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)– the so-called ‘second pillar’). Moreover, the demise of the cold war and the rapid growth of CFSP and its subset, the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), have led to some tensions in the ‘grey areas’ that fall in-between the Community
and CFSP. The purpose of this contribution is to examine the nature and extent of these tensions and to consider various approaches to resolving, or at least diminishing, them.