The Amsterdam Treaty provided for some aspects of JHA to be moved to the supranational pillar of the EC. These related to asylum and visa issues, immigration policy, and external border controls. .
Standing above the three pillars and in a position to coordinate activities across all of them is the European Council. The council is in strict legal terms not an EU institution. It is the meeting place of the leaders of the national governments. Its decisions are almost always unanimous but usually require intensive bargaining. The council shapes the integration process and has been responsible for almost all EU developments, the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties. The European Council has provided the EU with initiatives for further development, agendas in various policy fields, and decisions that it expects the EU to accept. The council's actions illustrate one of the major dilemmas within the EU: how to promote further unity and integration while permitting national governments to retain as much influence as possible over decisions.
A closer look .
Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).
The European Union has been exploring new territory through the operation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). However, there has been two camps when evaluating the significance and the practical implementation of the EU in general and its specific bodies and treaties. On the one hand, a rather negative attitude is voiced, according to which the CFSP is nothing but a further formal elaboration of the policy alignment of European Parliament Code (EPC). According to this view, the CFSP will not lead to any substantive changes, because intergovernmentalism has been maintained. Consequently, the first camp argues that the modified institutional and legal framework, though constituting a formal reform, will not add anything in practice, because the achievement of objectives will continue to be entirely dependent on the political will of the partners involved.