The European Security Community (ESC)

Because none of Europe"s serious problems can be solved as long as the problem of security has not found a solution, a new for European security has come to be an urgent requirement. Out of the structural weaknesses of the existing arrangements for peace and security in Europe, it is possible to develop an alternative concept for an efficient, functional and acceptable security organization for Europe as a whole. This is the task which the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) has set itself, taking as its leitmotif the idea of moving "from the law of the strongest to the strength of law." The organization being proposed is called the "European Security Community" (ESC). The ESC represents a regional collective security system. It would work on the principle of rigorous support by the community for the security of each of its members. This would require limited steps away from international cooperation in the direction of a supranational mechanism. For that reason, the option to use force, the last refuge in asserting the right to security would be made the responsibility of the international legal community.