The Treaty of Maastricht, which established the European Union, divided EU policies into three main areas called pillars.
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| European Union | ||||||
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| First pillar | Second pillar | Third pillar | ||||
| European Community (EC) | Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) | Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC) | ||||
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Foreign policy:
Security policy:
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Within each pillar, a different balance is struck between the supranational and intergovernmental principles.
Supranationalism is strongest in the first pillar. Its function generally corresponded at first to the three European Communities (European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), European Economic Community (EEC) and Euratom) whose organisational structure had already been unified in 1965-67 through the Merger Treaty. Later, through the Treaty of Maastricht the word "Economic" was removed from the EEC, so it became simply the EC. Then with the Treaty of Amsterdam additional areas would be transferred from the third pillar to the first. In 2002, the ECSC (which had a life time of 50 years) ceased to exist because the treaty which established it, the Treaty of Paris, had expired.
In the CFSP and PJCC pillars the powers of the European Parliament, the Commission and European Court of Justice with respect to the Council are significantly limited, without however being altogether eliminated. The balance struck in the first pillar is frequently referred to as the "community method", since it is that used by the European Community.
The pillar structure had its historical origins in the negotiations leading up to the Maastricht treaty. It was desired to add powers to the Community in the areas of foreign policy, security and defence policy, asylum and immigration policy, criminal co-operation, and judicial co-operation.
However, some member-states opposed the addition of these powers to the Community on the grounds that they were too sensitive to national sovereignty for the community method to be used, and that these matters were better handled intergovernmentally. To the extent that at that time the Community dealt with these matters at all, they were being handled intergovernmentally, principally in European Political Cooperation (EPC).
As a result, these additional matters were not included in the European Community; but were tacked on externally to the European Community in the form of two additional 'pillars'. The first additional pillar (Common Foreign and Security Policy, CFSP) dealt with foreign policy, security and defence issues, while the second additional pillar (JHA, Justice and Home Affairs), dealt with the remainder.
Recent amendments in the treaty of Amsterdam and the treaty of Nice have made the additional pillars increasingly supranational. Most important among these has been the transfer of policy on asylum, migration and judicial co-operation in civil matters to the Community pillar, effected by the Amsterdam treaty. Thus the third pillar has been renamed Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters, or PJCC. The term Justice and Home Affairs is still used to cover both the third pillar and the transferred areas.
| 1948 Brussels |
1952 Paris |
1958 Rome |
1967 Brussels (founded EC) |
1987 SEA |
1993 Maastricht (founded EU) |
1999 Amsterdam |
2003 Nice |
2009? Lisbon |
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| European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) | |||||||||
| European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) | European Union (EU) | ||||||||
| European Economic Community (EEC) | → P I L L A R S → |
European Community (EC) | |||||||
| ↑European Communities↑ | Justice & Home Affairs (JHA) | ||||||||
| Police & Judicial co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC) | |||||||||
| European Political Cooperation (EPC) | Common Foreign & Security Policy (CFSP) | ||||||||
| Western European Union (WEU) | |||||||||
In a speech before the Nice Conference, Joschka Fischer, then Foreign Minister of Germany, called for a simplification of the European Union, resulting in the draft of a European Constitution. Though this constitution failed due to referenda in France and the Netherlands, the main ideas remained the same. One of these core ideas was the de facto abolition of the pillar structure. Therefore the draft Treaty of Lisbon, if ratified by all member states, will simplify and unify the legal structure of the European Union. As such the current three pillar structure will be replaced as all functions will be merged into the European Union which will have a legal personality of its own for the first time.
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