The Influence of the European Parliament on the European External Action Service

Since its early beginnings, the Member States of the European Communities have tried to establish and at the same time were reluctant to implement a common foreign policy. Only the Maastricht Treaty introduced an institutional framework. However, the emerging Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has been criticized for its lack of democratic legitimacy, since it has been dominated by the Member States at the expense of democratic control by the European Parliament. Therefore, it is puzzling that the Lisbon Treaty implemented new powers for the Parliament in external relations. Derived from New Institutionalism, content analyses of inter-institutional documents on the construction of the new European External Action Service suggest that the strong democratic profile of the Parliament as well as intra-institutional dynamics within the political system of the European Union translated into institutional powers of the Parliament even further than the Lisbon Treaty intended.

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