The treaties establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) contained, from their very beginning, the possibility of enlarging the initial number of six member states. Article 98 ECSC provided that ‘[a]ny European State may request to accede to the present Treaty’ and laid down the enlargement procedure. When the EEC and Euratom Treaties were concluded in 1958, no ECSC enlargements had occurred. The main elements of the enlargement procedure of Article 98 ECSC would not only remain the principal features of the accession provision in the EEC Treaty (Article 237) and Euratom Treaty (Article 205), but also continue to be the key references in the unique accession provision in later versions of the Treaty on European Union (TEU).

Part of the fascination of specialising in the law of the European Union (EU) is the sense of firing at a constantly moving target, and nowhere is this more obviously true than in the external relations field. European Union activity on the international scene is expanding rapidly, and there has been correspondingly rapid development of the legal concepts, principles and rules that are needed to organise it. Moreover, external relations law is bound to be affected by all that has been going on domestically within the EU. During the period of the conception, implementation and finalisation of the present volume, the EU has been involved in a gigantic enlargement operation; a Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (‘the Constitutional Treaty’) has been negotiated and signed, and then failed to secure ratification; and a debate has taken place, culminating in the signature on 13 December 2007 of a reforming Treaty, christened ‘Treaty of Lisbon’ (TL). This will incorporate most of the institutional and substantive reforms envisaged by the failed instrument, while eschewing its constitution-making pretensions.

There seemed to be a real need, therefore, for a volume taking stock of recent developments in the external relations law of the EC and in the law of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) that results from Title V TEU, while also investigating the increasing interaction between these different fields of EU competence.

Introduction

Since the Treaty of Maastricht, the external action of the European Union(EU) has been conducted under the distinct sets of constitutional arrangements found respectively in the EC Treaty (the first pillar) and in Title V and Title VI of the TEU (the second and third pillars). This chapter is more particularly concerned with the relationship between the Union's first pillar competences, exercised through the persona of the European Community (EC) and extending to those fields of external activity for which legal bases exist in the EC Treaty, and its directly exercisable second pillar competence in the field of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

Central to the management of that relationship (as well as of the relationship between first and third pillar competences) is Article 47 of the TEU, found among the Final Provisions in Title VIII of that Treaty. The Article states:

Evidently, the function of Article 47 is to preserve the integrity of the legal order that was brought into being by the EC Treaty, in the face of the new competences conferred upon the Union by the TEU.

Introduction

Writing on the relations between the EU and Andorra, San Marino and Monaco is not an easy exercise. Various aspects make these relationships very complex. An important one has to do with history, whether or not in combination with geography. It is simply impossible to examine the relationships between the EU and, for example, Andorra, without explaining why Andorra is where it is and how it comes that this piece of land in the heart of the Pyrenees is neither France nor Spain and not part of the EU. But entering into the unique and often fascinating history of micro-States in a contribution like this is an almost impossible venture. Constraints of various natures impose all kinds of limitations and the reality is such that only a very fragmented picture of the relevant historical facts can be provided. Nevertheless, the very short historical background to each of the three micro-States should help to elucidate their specificity in their present relations with the EU.

One of the characteristics common to all of the European micro-States is the very special relationship with their immediate neighbour or neighbours; this very often also explains why their neighbours did not absorb them. But this common feature is at the same time the characteristic which makes it very difficult to make generalisations.