PESC The objective of a “common foreign and security policy” for the EU was spelt out in the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992. Without prejudice to the rights of individual member states on matters of foreign policy and the obligations deriving from UN membership, the role of the EU’s common foreign and security policy was reviewed by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, whose provisions represent the juridical basis for the Union’s will and capacity to act externally in a collective manner, both within the framework of her own institutions and in collaboration either with other international organizations or with individual third countries. PESD The Treaty of Amsterdam also endowed the European Union with a common security policy that comprises the progressive definition of a policy aimed at the adoption of a fully-fledged European system of collective defence. The Cologne Summmit of 1999 placed crisis management missions at the centre of the reinforcement of common defence. But the achievement of this objective still does not involve the creation of a European army, since the commitment and deployment of military forces still remain subject to the sovereign decisions of member states. The Nice Summit in 2000 established new permanent political and military structures aimed at ensuring the political control and strategic management of crises: the Political and Security Committee and the Military Committee.
