European security has historically been linked to the expectations-capabilities gap of the European Union (EU) as well as the EU’s role as a normative power reflected by the conscious choices made by European leaderships. Treaties have been the defining parameters of the operational ability, cognitive potential and institutional capacity of Europe to play a normative role in world politics. The Arab Spring phenomenon has illustrated the actual potential of the EU to act in unity. It has also shown that when inherent European idealism clashes with the realities of international politics, securitized idealism becomes the only viable choice. The concept bears a value-fact (security) oxymoron and is based on the need to balance security needs with the desire to spill over democracy in the Arab world.

The European security blueprint was set in the early 1990s with the Maastricht Treaty and was defined as Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It was the evolutionary outcome of the European integration process and the multilevel, multilayer collective efforts, at the intergovernmental level, to achieve convergence of fragmented national interests of the European nation-states. Operationally, it meant to allow a sui generis union of politically autonomous states to function in an orchestrated way, which appeared to be ideologically and institutionally compatible with the joint sovereignty doctrine.

According to the aforementioned power transfer model, “participation in the community does not entail power transfers but only a pooling of sovereignties by the member states.”1 This cautious and realistic step reflected the priorities of European Union (EU) member states, which appeared reluctant in transferring sovereignty over matters of high politics, resulting in the slow advancement of the second pillar of European integration based on the Treaty of Maastricht. The gradual steps taken were in essence an institutional evolution of the European Political Cooperation (EPC) notion elaborated in the early 1970s. In the beginning of the 1990s, this integrative effort took the form of a written minimal consensus in Maastricht and nominally2 set a twofold parallel aim: political and economic integration, in a way that multilevel interdependence and the pursuit of common goals would guarantee peace in Europe.

International Relations Journal, European Union (EU), Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), Arab Spring Phenomenon, European Security, Change and Continuity, Spectrum of Securitized Idealism.