FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

The Development of the EU's Political Role in
the Context of Palestinian-Israeli Relations 1
• •
Dr. Flora Kurikkala
Ministry ofForeign Affairs, Helsinki, Finland
1. Introduction
We act not only because there are things we want to have,
but also because there are persons we want to be.
(Ringmar 1996, 3)
The EU is often criticized for its lack of capacity to act, inability
to take a firm stance when needed, and its incoherence, in
general. The criticism raises the question of what kind of actor
the EU should be. Is it necessary to develop truly common foreign
and security policy, in a similar sense to national foreign
policies Or would it be wiser to settle for those fields of action
where the Union's strengths clearly are The European Union,
that we currently have, is very ambitious in its search for, what
could be called, a foreign policy identity. Originally, however,
according to Jean Monnet - a founding father of the Union ­
the reason for European integration was the intention to challenge
the world of nation states.
On the other hand, it would not be justified to say that the EU
is something less than the 'sum of its parts'. The Union has at
1 The text is largely based on my doctoral dissertation (2003) and an article
published in 2005.
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