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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. Introduction: The E3/EU Iran Group

Author : Riccardo Alcaro

Published in: Europe and Iran’s Nuclear Crisis

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Between 2003 and 2015, the European Union and its member states were directly involved in the management of one of the most prominent issues of international concern: how to bring the Islamic Republic of Iran to give verifiable guarantees that its nuclear programme would not be diverted to military purposes. Over the course of this 13-year-long period, a group of member states consisting of the ‘big three’, France, Germany and the UK, supported by the EU (E3/EU), shaped the European Union’s approach. The E3/EU group is the most important instance of a peculiar foreign policy practice of EU foreign policy, the ‘lead group’, which has received scarce expert and scholarly attention. This book aims to fill the gap.

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next chapter The Theory: Lead Groups and EU Foreign Policy-Making
Footnotes
1
The metaphor of the ‘strange beast’ was first introduced, or at least popularised, by Thomas Risse in a 1996 article in which he made the case for a sophisticated theoretical approach to the problem of EU integration, capable of overcoming the stalled debate between intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism (Risse-Kappen 1996).
 
2
Rummel and Wiedemann contended that introducing majority voting in the CFSP would not solve its effectiveness problem. A majority voting rule would give member states lacking strong foreign policy assets the power to force into action the member states having those assets – hardly a recipe for cohesion. They argued that EU member states should instead agree in advance, based on their respective interests, commitment and assets, which issues the Union should address collectively (Rummel and Wiedemann 1998: 63–64).
 
3
Article 44.2 specifies that this procedure involves the Council taking formal decisions clearly indicating objectives, scope and conditions for the implementation of the task.
 
4
This standard definition implies that the (now moribund) Quartet for the Middle East, the forum made up of the United States, Russia, the UN and the European Union, responsible for brokering Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, does not fall into the lead group category. The European Union took part in the Quartet according to treaty provisions, which contrasts with the assumption that lead groups follow an extra-treaty pattern of conduct.
 
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Metadata
Title
Introduction: The E3/EU Iran Group
Author
Riccardo Alcaro
Copyright Year
2018
Book
Europe and Iran’s Nuclear Crisis

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74297-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-74298-4

Copyright Year: 2018

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74298-4_1

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