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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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  • Download the EUISS Yearbook
    29May 2013
    EUISS Yearbook of European Security 2013
    By

    The Institute’s Yearbook of European Security (YES) contains key facts, figures, chronological lists, documents and maps relating to the EU’s external security dimension. Its purpose is to present a comprehensive picture of what the EU has achieved in the security policy domain during the preceding year/s. The inaugural edition covers 2011 and 2012, and includes a mapping section on foresight practices and trends in governments.

  • 23May 2013
    EUISS annual conference 2013

    The 2013 Annual Conference of the EU Institute for Security Studies, entitled ‘European Security. Taking stock and moving forth’, took place in Paris on 23 and 24 May. In addition to a keynote address by HR/VP Catherine Ashton, the conference provided a platform to present the new team of the Institute as well as the first EUISS Yearbook.

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    06May 2013
    Enabling the future – European military capabilities 2013-2025: challenges and avenues
    By
    Rapporteur(s):

    What sort of armed forces are Europeans likely to have (and need) by 2025? How might Europeans better organise themselves to take part in the new global competition for wealth, influence and power? This report seeks to place European military capabilities in a broader perspective and demonstrate how the only way to safeguard common ‘strategic interests’ and counter potential risks is to do more together.

  • 13March 2013
    EU Washington Forum 2013

    Taking place in Washington, D.C on the 13-14 March, the 2013 EUWF served as a reminder that diplomacy, development and defence are all important elements in attempts to maintain stability and generate growth, even in times of budgetary constraints.

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    08March 2013
    L’Instrument de Stabilité – au service de l’approche globale de l’UE
    By

    Au cours des dernières années, si l’IdS a indéniablement gagné en importance, il demeure encore méconnu comparativement à la PSDC. Leur histoire est pourtant parallèle et leurs activités complémentaires, de façon à renforcer l’approche globale prônée par l’UE dans la Stratégie européenne de sécurité.

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    20February 2013
    Strategic foresight - and the EU
    By

    With various political and institutional initiatives across the Union indicating a growing interest in the analysis of trends and factors that may affect Europe’s position in the years and decades to come, the EUISS Director digs deeper into the nature, practice and record of strategic foresight.

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    28January 2013
    Ten years after: lessons from the EUPM in Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002-2012
    By
    With contributions from

    The launch of the EU Police Mission (EUPM) was for many the first tangible outcome from the EU CFSP. This joint report contributes, through the identification of key lessons and recommendations, to collaborative lessons learning for police reform in BiH, CSDP and the EU’s external action in general.

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    25January 2013
    Comment choisir ses mesures restrictives? Guide pratique des sanctions de l’UE
    By

    Les mesures restrictives sont les instruments de prédilection de l’Union européenne (UE) pour imposer des mesures de coercition aux pays tiers. Distinguant les différents cas de figure en cause en fonction de leur coût juridique potentiel, il s’agira ici de proposer un guide pratique du choix des mesures restrictives appropriées.

  • 20December 2012
    EUISS 2.0: back to the future
    By

    In the new institutional landscape, Antonio Missiroli describes how and why the EUISS must adapt and develop in order to prove its added value by strengthening its profile as a provider of expertise and strategic analysis and becoming a hub of networking activities and debate.

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    30November 2012
    EU engagement in the Sahel: lessons from Somalia and AfPak
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    This policy brief looks at the prospects for the proposed EU training mission in Mali and examines what lessons might be learned from the EU’s previous contribution to international peacekeeping efforts in Somalia as well as the exent to which the fragile security situation in Northern Mali has the potential to become another Afghanistan.

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  • 01September 2001
    11 Septembre : impact sur la PESD
    By

    Il est bien évidemment difficile de tirer des conclusions définitives sur l’impact des attentats du 11 septembre. Toutefois, s’agissant de la PESD, trois séries d’effets sont envisageables, étant entendu qu’ils peuvent être parfois contradictoires entre eux et selon que l’analyse se place sur le court ou le long terme

  • 01September 2001
    Enlargement and European security after 11 September
    By

    What consequences may the terrorist acts of 11 September have for EU enlargement? Will they facilitate it or make it more complicated? And what is likely to be their overall impact on pan-European security?

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    02July 2001
    Nuclear weapons: a new Great Debate
    By

    In nuclear matters more than in any other political area, perceptions have the force of law. The most concrete nuclear technology would count for little without the extremely sophisticated theories of uncertainty that form the basis of any nuclear deterrence strategy. Yet for the last few years both the technological and intellectual worlds of deterrence, as mankind has known it since 1945, have been in turmoil on all continents.

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    02May 2001
    From St-Malo to Nice: European defence: core documents
    By

    In the two years between St-Malo and Nice, the character of the European Union changed. What was previously unthinkable ‘at Fifteen’ became an objective agreed by all member states: the inclusion in the Union’s legitimate competencies of a common security and defence policy, in other words its acquisition of strategic responsibility in post-Cold War crisis management.

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    01May 2001
    Le MTCR face à la proliferation des missiles
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    Le Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) est à l’heure actuelle le seul dispositif politico-juridique international de lutte contre la prolifération des missiles. Il a été mis sur pied en 1987 par les 7 pays les plus industrialisés, et regroupe aujourd’hui 33 Etats.

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    01May 2001
    Coherence for security policy: debates - cases- assessments
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    This Occasional Paper stems from a series of meetings of an ISS Task Force on ‘The Coherence of CFSP’ held in Paris between October 2000 and April 2001. Task Forces are small groups of experts and officials from member States, international bodies and think tanks that convene periodically to discuss a given topic or policy area. They usually include a ‘core group’ of members and other participants that join in according to the specific focus of each meeting.

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    01May 2001
    A common European export policy for defence and dual-use items?
    By

    In Europe, arms and dual-use exports raise complex questions. They fall between two policy spheres that are organised in a distinctly contrasting manner. On the one hand, they are an intrinsic part of commercial policy that lies within the exclusive competence of the European Community (EC). On the other hand, they come under the aegis of security and defence policy, a jealously guarded area of responsibility of the EU member states.

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    02March 2001
    Military intervention and the European Union
    By

    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
    By

    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
    By

    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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