Research On The Differential Integration Under The EU's Common Foreign And Security Policy

Differentiated integration(DI)is a series of differentiation in state's rights and obligations recognized by the EU treaties.With the increase in EU membership and the development of the common policy,there are DI mechanisms across all major EU policy areas.Based on the characteristics of Common Foreign and Security Policy(CFSP),the article focuses on the phenomenon of DI in CFSP,analyses their policymaking and application process to understand the current situation and impact of DI in CFSP and identify the characteristics of DI in CFSP.The article believes that the formation logic of DI is roughly accomplished in the end of 1980 s.The DI in CFSP is actually a phenomenon of transferring the formation logic of DI to the new common policy field.Because there is a cooperation character and foundation difference between the current CFSP and the European Community at the moment of building the formation logic of DI,the article assumes that the DI in CFSP,comparing with the DI in the other policy field,has three characteristics: firstly,it is mainly deal with the differentiation in cooperation will;secondly,its decisionmaking and application process is rarely influenced by the common policy and thirdly,the DI's impact in this field has two sides that hard to tell which one is prominent.Then,the article testifies above assumptions by analysing the promulgation and application process of Opt-out,Constructive Abstention,and the Permanent Structured Cooperation.It turns out that only the opt-out,which is the first DI instrument in CFSP,can basically meet all assumptions.The application process of Constructive Abstention can meet the assumption about the triggering reason.But,when Cyprus deciding to use this instrument,his EU membership is one of the major influencing factors.Besides,the positive impact of this decision is relatively higher than its potential risk.As for the application process of PESCO,it shows noticeable difference with above assumptions: the triggering reason of PESCO is a mixture of differentiation in cooperation capacity at macro level and differentiation in cooperation will at micro level;its decision-making is highly entwined with the will of EU defence and security cooperation;its positive impact on CFSP is higher than precedent DI instruments.Above DI process shows two major developing trends: firstly,with the development of CFSP,the impact of common policy on DI is increasing;secondly,with the development of DI,the DI instrument's intention to promote the cooperation will be gradually prominent.Based on that,the DI is possible to turn to be a long-term development pattern for EU constructions in the future.However,due to the function of DI is adapting to the differentiation not solving the differentiation,the EU and its members still need to be cautious when using the DI instrument,and prevent from the risk of fragmentation which the DI may leads to at the same time.