After the EUGS: specifying the military tasks

The European Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) describes how the EU’s external action should be conducted in the coming years. It strongly emphasises the complexity of the environment and includes numerous indications on the way the military instrument(s) at the EU’s disposal should be used, further developed (in a cooperative manner) and connected to other internal and external actors. The strategy makes clear that the military has a role in external action, but always as part of a broader set of instruments. The EUGS puts particular emphasis on the ever-closer link between military and civilian actors, essentially (though not exclusively) in the framework of CSDP, and it proposes a follow-on process whereby ‘a sectoral strategy, to be agreed by the Council, should further specify the civil-military level of ambition (LoA), tasks, requirements and capability priorities stemming from this strategy’. Even if a timeframe has not been set yet for this process, its connection to other planned processes (the Defence Action Plan, Preparatory Action, European Defence Research Programme etc.) needs to be specified. What are the possible work-strands which should flow from the EUGS?