COMMON FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY: SEEKING A BROADER VISION FOR THE EU IN THE WORLD.

Mr Solana said progress on putting the Common Security and Defence Policy into place was "satisfactory - even rapid", and the work of the new Political and Security Committee is already helping build a more concrete and operational CFSP, and allowing improved joint analysis of international questions through co-operation with the Council's Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit. At the same time, the Council is working more closely with the Member States and the Commission to make external relations more coherent, by improving deployment of the economic, diplomatic and - shortly - defence resources. He said, "We are trying to improve the way that the EU fixes its foreign policy priorities", including through better use of the Common Strategies after they have undergone "radical reform", and through greater co-ordination of EU positions at the United Nations and in other international fora.But thinking has only just started on how the EU will have to conduct itself after enlargement - however wide that went, which was itself a question that had not even been seriously posed yet, he said. "We are not yet prepared" for the new situation where the EU will border Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Syria, admitted Mr Solana. But he said it was certain that the adjustments would have to be debated about priorities in EU foreign relations in that new situation. "Relations with neighbouring countries that will not be in the EU be one of the principal tasks of the future", he predicted, evoking the specific security and foreign relations challenges that will be posed.What the High Representative urged was reflection on how to create an EU policy for an enlarged Europe, how to promote stability on its periphery, how to avoid new "iron curtains" across an area where the Eastern borders of the continent are historically imprecise, and how to balance policy priorities relating to the EU's Eastern and South-Eastern borders with its other external relations policies - from EU-US relations to questions of North-South aid and the trends to globalisation. The CFSP...