Why Europe still needs to develop

The EU faces more complex times and a different response is needed, argues Pat Cox.

OVER the past two decades our debates in Ireland on the EU’s evolving common foreign and security policy have focused too little on context and practice and too much on overblown and frequently lurid assertions about its intent.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the rapid end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, dramatically altered the strategic landscape. It carried both opportunities and challenges in its wake.