Contesting the Uncontestable: European Values, National Interests, and the CFSP

rticle 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) clearly states that the European Union is “founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the member states in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.” Furthermore, Article 6 outlines that fundamental rights “as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, shall constitute general principles of the Union's law”. The aim of this paper is to see how well european values are safgeguarded and promoted in a policy area such as foreign policy and security policy. The research question is: how does promotion of European values fair when confronted with national interests of member states. To give an answer to this question the analysis of the European Council members' statements in the area of Western Balkans enlargement policy and Russia relations policy will be done. The tentative conclusion is that when European values are in direct conflict with national interests of member states they will either be ignored or only simbolically mentioned. This, in turn, show us the primacy of the national over supranational in CFSP.