Original scientific paper
EUROPEAN POLITICS AT THE TIME OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE YUGOSLAV FEDERATION
Sandro Knezović
; Institute for International Relations, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The turmoils in international relations following the fall of the
Berlin wall represented a serious challenge for the overall concept of
European political unity. In its first international assignment outside
the context of the Cold war, traditional national interests and animosities surfaced, and they demonstrated rather precisely all the
complexity of the project promulgated by the Maastricht Agreement.
At the time there was no common European approach to the solution
of the crisis on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and no consent
regarding the key issues, such as the recognition of the former Yugoslav republics as sovereign entities i.e. defining the criteria for their recognition. The paper focuses on this very specificity of the new approach to this problem, since it has increasingly been a subject of discretionary political decisions rather than the issue of international law in the traditional sense of meeting certain criteria for state recognition.
And finally, concerning the degree of encroaching upon national
sovereignty, there is a marked difference between the nature of the
process of shaping a common foreign and security policy and shaping
policies in other areas (e.g. transport, science and education, and so
on). Also, the importance of developing an awareness of this difference as the main precondition for the realization of the project of the EU political integration is pointed out.
Keywords
European Union; sovereignity; security policy; international recognition
Hrčak ID:
20441
URI
Publication date:
2.2.2007.
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