In the summer of I98I, on the eve of the UK Presidency of the European Community, I wrote an article for International Affairs about European Political Cooperation. 'Now,' I wrote, 'in some areas of diplomacy our policy is formed wholly within a European context; and in no area is the European influence completely absent.'" I described this phenomenon then as a significant change in our diplomatic method and practices. Ten years on, in I99I, the Comnion Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) chapter of the Maastricht treaty confirmed this development. European cooperation in foreign policy, or at least the attempt to achieve it, is now more than ever the norm and national action the exception. The treaty has introduced a new instrument to make that cooperation more effective: 'joint action'. With our record of making and effecting a global foreign policy, Britain is now well placed to play a leading role in making that mechanism work: setting the European foreign policy agenda, and showing the strength of an intergovernmental process based on consensus. This article looks closely at CFSP: what it is, where it came from and how it will work. CFSP is now an established fact of European diplomatic life. Yet, except to the practitioners and perhaps even to some of them-it remains a nebulous concept, hard to distinguish from its predecessor (European Political Cooperation), hard to pin down. This article seeks to draw out some of the distinctions and speculate on what changes CFSP might make to the face of European foreign policy. Formalized European cooperation in the field of foreign policy began in I970. The six foreign ministers then agreed to meet every six months to consider foreign policy issues. A Political Committee of senior diplomats was established to prepare these meetings. In the mid-ig8os the Single European