| Popis: |
This chapter looks at the voting behaviour of the Member States of the European Union (EU MS) in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) between 1988 and 2005. It shows that voting coherence is high only in those areas in which the national policies of the EU MS have very much converged over the last decades. In other fields national interests continue to be pursued by the individual countries. Thus the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (CFSP) does not make such an overall difference: it works where in line with national interests, it does not where conflicting interests exist within the EU group. In any case national interests carry more weight than the pressure to act coherently. Besides general voting analysis for the UNGA, also a dissection of the recorded votes from a content-orientated, thematic point of view appears to be useful.Keywords: CFSP; European Union (EU); Member States (MS); national policies; United Nations General Assembly (UNGA); voting behaviour |
