1 European Union Non-Proliferation Policies Before and After the 2003 Strategy: Continuity and Change Clara Portela and Benjamin Kienzle 1. Introduction At its December 2003 summit, the European Council adopted its first ‘Strategy against the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)’. This document was released only six months after the European Security Strategy (ESS), also the first of its kind in the history of the EU. Until then, nuclear non-proliferation had been slowly making its way into the EU’s agenda: the EU had taken some steps to combat the spread of nuclear weapons within its CCFSP, focusing mainly the universalisation of treaties, transparency in export controls and promoting some regional initiatives. However, these efforts remained dispersed and low-profile and had never been integrated in a co- ordinated strategy. Why did the EU become active in nuclear non-proliferation, and why did it choose to do so at that particular point in time? Most importantly, did the release of a formal strategy introduce a significant upgrade to EU non-proliferation policies? The present chapter argues that while the framing of an EU non-proliferation strategy pre-dated the adoption of the strategy, this document heralded a qualitative improvement in EU action. The political impulse for the release of the strategy and the subsequent development of the EU’s activity in the field responded to pressures generated by the 9/11 attacks. Yet, while the strategy endowed the EU with visibility, particularly in the framework of the Iran nuclear crisis, it has not compelled member states to overcome fundamental divisions in their approaches to nuclear weapons. In order to assess the significance of the strategy, the chapter first examines the EU’s record in the field up until 2003. In a second step, it reviews the EU’s record following the release of the strategy with a view to identifying patterns of continuity and change. 2. European Non-Proliferation Policy before the 2003 Strategy 2.1 Origins and Rationale The external role of the then European Community (EC) 1 in non-proliferation originated as early as in 1981, when the Council set up a working group on nuclear questions in the context of the European Political Co-operation (EPC), in whose framework member states started to coordinate national positions in international fora. At a first stage, the working group produced some common statements at UN fora and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on safeguards and nuclear technology transfers. Notably, the European Council imposed an embargo on major nuclear supplies to South Africa in 1986. But it was only at the beginning of the 1990s that the EC was compelled to upgrade its role in non-proliferation. The Treaty on European Union signed at Maastricht in 1991 created an enhanced framework for foreign policy co-ordination formally linking the EC and the CFSP, and explicitly empowering the EU to deal with