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Security and defence

The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) is an integral part of EU foreign policy. Through its military operations and civilian missions, the EU has contributed to regional and global stability. Since it's inception, the CSDP has responded to a shifting regional security context. It has played a vital role in crisis management in the EU's near and wider neighbourhood but it is also an essential part of the EU's broader approach to the protection of Europe and capacity building.

Although the Lisbon Treaty consolidated the EU's crisis management apparatus, the EU Global Strategy has set a new level of ambition for EU defence. In addition to the CSDP playing an operational role in the EU's integrated approach to crises, the EU Global Strategy has stressed the need for the EU to become a more capable and effective defence actor. Initiatives such as the European Defence Fund, the coordinated annual defence review (CARD) and more coherent financing for EU operations and capacity building efforts are all aimed at supporting the EU's strategic autonomy and the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base. The EUISS continues to support the development of CSDP through outreach activities and expert publications.

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  • 02April 2001
    Defining a European Strategic Concept: 2 April 2001

    A seminar entitled ‘Defining a European Strategic Concept’, took place in Paris on 2 April 2001 (Julian Lindley-French). This seminar examined the relationship between the evolution and development of the political and military aspects of European defence.

  • 12March 2001
    Towards a European Police Force: 12 March 2001

    A seminar entitled ‘Police for Peacebuilding: what role for the EU?’, took place in Paris on 12 March 2001 (Maartje Rutten). The aim of the seminar was to look at the process of establishing the EU pool of 5,000 police officers. The discussions centred on lessons learned from previous involvement of police in crisis management operations, the specific challenges for the EU in assembling police and ideas for enhancing implementation of the EU plans in this field. Participants comprised representatives from the EU Committee for Civil Aspects of Crisis Management, the Situation Centre/Crisis Cell at the Secretariat General at the EU Council of Ministers, the EU Military Staff, Europol, UN, OSCE, WEU, Gendarmerie and Carabinieri, in addition to many academics.

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    02March 2001
    Military intervention and the European Union
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    The Kosovo crisis marked a turning point in the development of the international system, not because the West was in any way improper in freeing itself from the constraints of realpolitik and UN legitimacy, but because it demonstrated the limits of those constraints.

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    01March 2001
    Realigning Neutrality? - Irish Defence Policy and the EU
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    Daniel Keohane explores the changing context of Irish defence policy in light of the rapid development of the CESDP. He touches on policy considerations germane to all EU member-states with a tradition of neutrality who are having to adjust to a new role in a changing world. Keohane also uses defence policy as a metaphor for the changing internal debate at a time when a strong and polemical discourse is underway about Ireland’s role in the wider world.

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    01February 2001
    Cold War dinosaurs or hi-tech arms providers? The West European land armaments industry at the turn of the millennium
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    With considerable delay in comparison to aerospace and defense electronics, a restructuring process is occurring in Europe’s land armaments sector. National consolidation in the big arms producing countries is paralleled by an increasing number of transnational link-ups.

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    02January 2001
    Between cooperation and competition: the transatlantic defence market
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    A few months ago, the Institute published a Chaillot Paper by Burkard Schmitt dealing specifically with the new industrial integration strategies of the big European armaments groups (Chaillot Paper 40, ‘From cooperation to integration: defence and aerospace industries in Europe’, July 2000). This Chaillot Paper examines the prospects for transatlantic cooperation in this field, and also the constraints on it.

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    01November 2000
    European integration and defence: the ultimate challenge?
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    Since St-Malo, three revolutions in European military affairs have been under way: the first concerns Britain, the second the process of European political integration and the third the actual management of security in the post-Cold War world. That is the main thrust of this Chaillot Paper, whose author, Jolyon Howorth is without doubt one of the foremost historians and specialists in matters of European security.

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    01September 2000
    European defence: making it work
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    For decades, the question of European defence had the dual and somewhat strange quality of being both a necessary condition for and an obstacle to political deepening of the European Union. It was a condition because only the possession of a minimum of military means would ensure the credibility and effectiveness of any international action by the Union, something that, in French rhetoric, was often epitomised as a demand for a Europe puissance.

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    01September 2000
    National Missile Defence and the future of nuclear policy
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    The first session focused on threat perceptions and threat assessments. The key question was whether a threat exists that justifies NMD deployment. Do the so-called ‘countries of concern’ really intent to threaten the US homeland and, even more importantly, do they have the financial and the technological means to scale up their existing arsenal to true intercontinental range?

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    01July 2000
    From cooperation to integration: defence and aerospace industries in Europe
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    Over the last two years, two processes have considerably modified the European strategic landscape: the development of a common security and defence policy within the European Union on the one hand, and accelerated restructuring of defence industries on the other.

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