Home > All journals > European Foreign Affairs Review > 29(3) >
$15.00 - Rental (PDF) *
$29.00 - Article (PDF) *
Wannes Verstraete
European Foreign Affairs Review
Volume 29, Issue 3 (2024) pp. 361 – 378
https://doi.org/10.54648/eerr2024016
Abstract
The world is entering an era of nuclear disorder. Therefore, this article aims to examine the European engagement with nuclear weapon questions at the beginning of this disorder. The research questions are: in what ways does Europe engage with nuclear issues? And how to make sense of the divergence and ambivalent stances among European states on nuclear weapons? The review identified engagement regarding non-proliferation and divergence on disarmament at the EU level, but mostly disengagement with nuclear deterrence questions outside of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), apart from short-lived discussions on the so-called ‘Eurodeterrent’. Regarding the former observation, it becomes increasingly hard to forge common positions on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament within an EU context. The latter observation is exemplified by recurring but ephemeral debates on a European nuclear deterrent. To understand the divergence and ambivalent stances, several factors are of importance, varying from the primacy of national interest to geography. Consequently, while the world is entering an era of nuclear disorder, Europeans should start a strategic dialogue on the necessity of nuclear weapons without undermining transatlantic relations.
Keywords
Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, Eurodeterrent, Non-Proliferation, Disarmament, European Security, Trans-Atlantic Security, European Union, NATO.
Extract
Only one of Europe’s micro-states is a republic: the Republic of San Marino. This non-EU Member State is an enclave of Italy and sits in a mountainous region of the Apennine Mountains. Given its proximity to the EU, being fully surrounded by it, and the extent to which integration through law has occurred within the EU, the law and policy of EU external relations demands that EU-San Marino relations must exist in some way. Yet the EU’s legal relations with third states in Europe have evolved along different trajectories, accounting for the individuality and uniqueness of each. As uncovered in this article, the EU-Sammarinese relationship stretches across a limited array of international agreements, with their own specific width and depth. Taken together, this mishmash of accords, and the way in which regulatory alignment is designed by them, portrays an outdated model of relations that need an update. With an envisaged association agreement between the EU and San Marino on the horizon, this article analyses the legal relations of the parties as they presently stand, accounting for their history, the substance of the international agreements, and the promise of what future legal relations ought to achieve between them.