The European Commission and the European Defence Agency: A Case of Rivalry?

Foreword, Hilmar Linnenkamp Introduction, Nikolaos Karampekios & Iraklis Oikonomou PART I: Theorising the European Defence Agency 1. Institutionalist Approaches to Agency Establishment, Helena Ekelund 2. The EDA and the discursive construction of European defence and security, Andre Barrinha 3. Brothers in Arms? The European Arms Industry and the Making of the EDA, Iraklis Oikonomou PART II: The European Defence Agency in Action 4. EU Military Capability Development and the European Defence Agency: Ideas, Interests, and Institutions, Alistair J.K. Shepherd 5. The European Defence Agency and Armaments Collaboration, Katia Vlachos-Dengler 6. The European Defence Agency and the Field of Research and Technology, Anja Dahlmann, Marcel Dickow and Lea Tisserant 7. The EDA and the Integration of the European Defence Market, Aris Georgopoulos PART III: The European Defence Agency, the Nation-state and Beyond 8. France, the UK and the European Defence Agency, Jocelyn Mawdsley 9. Germany's limited leadership in the EDA: international and domestic constraints on defence cooperation, Tom Dyson 10. Organizations at war: The EDA, NATO and the European Commission, Marc R. DeVore PART IV: Broadening of the EU Armaments Policy Agenda 11. The EDA and military capability development: making Pooling and Sharing Work, Laura Chappell and Petar Petrov 12. The EDA and the Development of a European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, Marie-Louise Chagnaud, Christian Molling and Torben Schutz 13. The EDA and Defence Offsets: Tailing after the Commission, Peter Platzgummer 14. The European Defence Agency's Inroads into Space, Frank Slijper Conclusion, Nikolaos Karampekios and Iraklis Oikonomou

This chapter discusses the efforts of the European Defence Agency (EDA) to decrease the fragmentation of the European Defence Technological and Industrial base by coordinating offset practices of its member states. It first looks at the increasing use of offsets after the end of the Cold War. Second, it discusses the activities of the I&M Directorate of the EDA that led to the adoption of the Code of Conduct on Offsets by almost all member states and increased the transparency of offset practices in Europe. The third section discusses the introduction of the Defence Procurement Directive by the European Commission (EC), and the EDA's role as a catalyst in the change process that followed. While the EDA was able to increase awareness of offsets' effects on a common defence industrial base, implementation of the Defence Procurement Directive greatly marginalised these efforts. The current situation, which will eventually forbid the use of indirect civil offsets, provides an opportunity for the EDA to better coordinate still-existing defence offsets of member states in the future. But, the EDA has to define for itself a new and preferably stronger position on offsets, one that is not as driven by decisions made within the EC.

The chapter reflects upon the ten years since the establishment of the European Defence Agency (EDA) and analyses its role in the process of European integration in the area of defence procurement. The chapter examines the various initiatives undertaken so far by the EDA in the process of Europeanisation of a policy area that has been linked to core functions of the state and for that reason, based upon a decision making process carried out primarily at national level. Contrary to received wisdom that the EDA’s impact and role has been of limited importance – particularly after the advent of the Defence and Security Procurement Directive 2009/81/EC, proposed by the European Commission and adopted by the Council of the EU and the European Parliament – the chapter argues that the EDA’s contribution in the process of European integration in the field of defence procurement has been especially noteworthy. The chapter submits in particular that the EDA played a crucial role in two ways: First, it demystified and rendered more acceptable the deliberation at the EU level of issues pertaining to the design, rules and policies of defence procurement. Second, by doing so it provided additional political “legitimisation” to the European integration process in this area which led to the enactment of the Defence and Security Procurement Directive. Finally the chapter argues that the EDA must continue its important contribution to the European defence procurement integration and identifies the areas that it may do so.

Capabilities matter. If the European Union (EU) is to live up to its ambition ‘to assume increased responsibilities in the maintenance of international peace and security’ (Council of the EU 2012: 1), then capabilities, especially military capabilities, are vital. The need for reformed and improved armed forces was a fundamental rationale for the launch of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in 1999 and the establishment of the European Defence Agency (EDA) in 2004. The EDA was set up to ‘to support the Member States and the Council in their effort to improve European defence capabilities in the field of crisis management and to sustain the European Security and Defence Policy’ (Council of the EU 2004). This has been a significant challenge. The 27 EU Member States that participate in CSDP and the EDA (Denmark having an opt-out of CSDP) have an impressive array of military capabilities and, combined, spend close to €200 billion on defence annually. Hence, the EU as whole has the potential to be one of the leading military actors on the international stage. Nevertheless, the EU and its Member States have also struggled to overcome a number of significant problems that have prevented them from addressing the capability gaps (shortfalls) that prompted the launch of CSDP in 1999. Therefore, 15 years after the launch of CSDP and ten years since the EDA was established, the EU as a whole is still struggling to avail itself of the military capabilities required to undertake the full range of missions it has set itself and to fulfil its ambition to be a ‘strategic global actor’ and ‘security provider’. What is particularly worrying for the EU is that even with the pressures of deep budget cuts, increasing demand for the deployment of armed forces and the American ‘pivot’ to Asia, there is still only limited evidence of the coordination and cooperation so desired by the EU in the field of military capability development. This chapter will trace and critically analyse the definitions and development of EU military capabilities since CSDP’s launch in 1999 and, in particular, since the establishment of the EDA. It will do so in a three partstructure woven together by (1) the idea of the EU as a military actor; (2) the interests of the Member States; and (3) the institutions that shape CSDP. The first section briefly examines CSDP’s formative phase, 1999-2004, which saw the establishment of the overarching capability framework (the Helsinki Headline Goal) and the launch of the first CSDP operations. The second section, 2004-2009, analyses efforts to consolidate and revitalise EU capability development through the setting up of the EDA, the launch of a new Headline Goal 2010, including EU Battlegroups, and the 2008 French Presidency. The final section, 2009-2014, explores the various capability programmes and projects the EDA has established as well as the tensions between the parallel initiatives of the Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) to enhance capability development through the EDA, and the decentralised moves to enhance capabilities outside the CSDP framework. The principal problem confronting EU military capability development are the tensions between the ideas, interests and institutions working in and across the EU.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) was founded in 2004 with the aim of improving the EU’s defence capabilities through promoting collaboration, common initiatives, and innovative solutions to the EU’s security needs. This article examines the nature of the relationship between European Union Member States and the EDA a decade after its founding. The agency has solidified a clear body of norms that it seeks Member States to implement. To a surprising extent, Member States have publically embraced these norms as necessary for the future viability of European security. But they at the same time resist implementing these norms in certain fundamental ways. Building upon the framework article of this special issue, the author applies the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘hidden’ transcripts to shed light on how Member States simultaneously embrace and resist norms in a climate of supranational pressure.

EU as a military actor is a hotly discussed topic in contemporary European Integration. At this time EU-led operations apparently show EU’s lack of market-scale defence industries, weakness of defence technological and industrial bases, and ineffectiveness of military cooperation programmes. Therefore, EU could try to improve its military operational capabilities through two approaches, namely the ‘NATO approach’ under the concept of CJTF and intra-European ‘EU-approach’ involving ECAP, Helsinki Headline Goal, and Headline Goal 2010, etc. Simultaneously, there is the EU-established European Defence Agency (EDA). Since 2004, EDA has served as the main driving force for promoting EU’s military capabilities. But an integrated and inter-operable EU force does not exist. Some challenges, e.g., the security exemption under Article 346, the government monopoly of the defence industries, the rush reduction of the defence budget, and the small scale of R&D investment, etc., could eliminate the functions of the EDA. Only when EU-MS strengthen their political willingness, accept the European-wide defence cooperation programmes, cooperate with the European Commission and ESDC, and utilize the Permanent Structured Cooperation under Lisbon Treaty, then EU can stably develop its military capability.

This paper tracks Greece’s engagement with the European Defence Agency (EDA). Greece has been an EU member state involved in setting up EDA. Indeed, its pro-integration stance on defence matters, at large, and EDA, in particular, can be traced back to its set of external security threats, and its belief that EU institutions and mechanisms can provide a protection layer against these threats. The chairing of important European defence preparatory groups (POLARM) and the Presidency of the Council provided normative agenda-setting procedures to uphold this objective. Significantly, Greece’s positions altered as EDA assumed operational status. Purely external security considerations were coupled with domestic, economic and political considerations, such as the protection of its defence industrial base, and disproving widely-held assumptions about political corruption in relation to defence procurement.

In 2010, it will be six years since the establishment of the European Defence Agency (EDA), which seeks to improve defence capabilities of the Member States of the European Union (EU) in crisis management to sustain Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The article describes the EDA Strategic Framework, consisting of four basic strategic documents that correspond with the EDA main tasks in the area of defence capabilities development, research and technology co-operation, armaments co-operation, and the creation of the European Defence Equipment Market (EDEM), while strengthening the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB). Against the background of the EDA Strategic Framework, the article maps the current major EDA projects and identifies the main challenges the EDA will face in the near future.

Defence and security research have coexisted at the European Union level since the inception of the European Defence Agency (EDA). The agency was established under a Joint Action of the Council of Ministers on 12 July 2004, “to support the Member States and the Council in their effort to improve European defence capabilities in the field of crisis management and to sustain the European Security and Defence Policy as it stands now and develops in the future”.1 The political decision to create the EDA was taken at the Thessaloniki European Council on 19 and 20 June 2003. Heads of State or Government tasked the Council bodies to undertake the requisite actions, in the course of 2004, to create an intergovernmental agency in the field of defence capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments. The EDA has been located in Brussels right from the start. It is an intergovernmental EU agency under the Council’s authority within the single institutional framework of the Union. It performs its mission in close cooperation with its participating Member States (pMS) and the European institutional actors.

The European Defence Agency (EDA), thanks to the adoption of a large number of strategic documents and its expertise in the formulation of collaborative projects, has become a crucial player in the European defence field. However, the role of the EDA and the everyday practices of the people that work in and collaborate with the Agency remain to be studied systematically. No empirical studies have been conducted to assess the EDA ‘hybrid’ way of working that includes European, governmental and non-governmental experts. The article argues that the EDA is at the core of an emerging transgovernmental network of European defence experts and professionals, that are able to share best practices, ‘know how’ and develop common norms of communication. This transgovernmental network of experts is generating a process of informal socialization among defence practitioners, it is shaping Member States’ defence planning in research and technology (R&T) activities and, in general, it is legitimizing the role of EDA in the broader EU institutional context.

Extract ----- Abstract New developments in the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), such as PESCO or the European Defence Fund (EDF), challenge the differentiated integration framework put forward by Frank Schimmelfennig, Dirk Leuffen and Berthold Rittberger: this policy is not and may have never been a case of low vertical integration and uniform horizontal integration. This paper presents an amended version of their framework based on constructivist institutionalist accounts of European integration. First, it discusses their explanatory variable. Rather than interdependence per se, this paper argues that it is the construction of interdependence that matters in order to understand integration. Second, rather than focusing on primary EU law, which often obscures many policy dynamics, this paper builds on legal, institutional and practice-level elements of CSDP. Based on these changes, this paper argues that national and European actors have constructed interdependence in this policy domain, by tying together armament-related issues with single market regulation and by linking armament-related issues with CSDP’s operational-military requirements around the issue of capabilities. These processes explain CSDP’s policy-making hybridity, i.e. the combination within CSDP of a more intergovernmental policy-making mode (especially but not restricted to operational-military elements) with more supranational elements (especially but not restricted to industrial armament-related elements), as well as its horizontal differentiation. The conclusion discusses the theoretical implications of policy-making hybridity. Keywords: Aarmament; CSDP; defence-industrial policy; differentiated integration; European Commission; European Defence Agency; European Defence Fund; hybridity; PESCO

The European Defense Agency (EDA) is the key institution of the European Union in the implementation of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) resource provision measures. The Agency has set objectives in the field of military resource development, defense research and development, pan-European cooperation projects on armaments, strengthening the industrial and technological structure and as a key direction, the creation of a joint competitive market for military and dual-use products. Significant progress has also been made in the area of unmanned aerial vehicles (Remote Piloted Aircraft Systems, RPAS). The aim of the project is to introduce unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the internal airspace. The Agency coordinates the interaction of the UAV national operators, the European Commission represented by the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport and the European UAV Leading Group. Keywords: European defense agency, military integration, unmanned aerial vehicles, European cooperation projects.

Despite the financial crisis, Member States still have international responsibilities to fulfil, particularly those with a high international standing. Meanwhile a number of operations both under the European Union (EU) as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have underlined that EU Member States suffer from a shortfall in core capabilities such as Air-to-Air Refuelling (AAR) and command and control. In this respect tools such as Pooling and Sharing (P&S) could allow the Member States to do more with less whilst being able to increase interoperability. However, the success of such initiatives depends on whether Member States are willing to pursue capability development within the EU as well as the ability of the European Defence Agency (EDA) to act as a motor in this field. This chapter seeks to analyse the prospects for the practical development of P&S projects as envisaged by the Ghent Initiative in 2010. It will do so by assessing the implementation of the initiative to date as well as underlining where the pitfalls lie. In particular the economic crisis could be used not only to reinvigorate defence capability collaboration but also as a reason to cut defence budgets and procurement programmes without then working collaboratively with other Member States to produce the necessary items. The idea here is that Member States still need to invest money to pool and share. This brings about the second pitfall – that of political will. As the EU Battlegroups have shown, developing capabilities does not mean an increased willingness to use them. The economic crisis could mean that political willingness even to develop capabilities could be lacking. Our aim is to ascertain the support among key Member States for P&S as well as how the EDA has been managing the project. In a second step we seek to understand why certain procurement and training initiatives under P&S are chosen and what role the EDA has in bringing together a strategic vision concerning projects. To analyse this we utilise European strategic culture as an analytical approach. Within it we show that there is a clash in vision concerning in which forum to produce capabilities, whichin turn means that P&S is based on a case by case basis rather than being shaped by any overall strategic vision. However, some hope is emerging not least because the individual cases sometimes emerge as a result of lessons learnt from operations – though not always EU ones. Thus the Member States, through this piecemeal process, are beginning to understand the types of operations it will be involved in and where capability gaps are emerging within this. A desire to work through the EU to solve these gaps also indicates an increasing preparedness to see the EU as an appropriate forum for capability development and in turn a defence actor. This could indicate that some of these conflicting visions are being overcome, leading in time to a more developed European strategic culture which bases defence capability development on when, where and with whom the EU wishes to use force.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) works in a policy area traditionally characterised by high diversity among actors regarding basic notions of what level of integration and which principles of interaction in the defence sector are appropriate for the EU, which countries should participate in defence cooperation, and what coordination mechanisms and instruments should be used. In all these dimensions, the EDA has been a flashpoint of institutional logics representing different visions of how various aspects of defence integration in the EU should be organised. There are tensions between the logic of supranational regulation and the logic of intergovernmental networking; between the logic of defence sovereignty and the logic of pooled defence resources; between the Europeanist and the Euro-Atlanticist logic; and finally between the logics of liberalisation and Europeanisation of the defence market. Studying the ways in which the collisions of institutional logics are being accommodated by the EDA can contribute to greater understanding of the emerging political order of European defence.

This chapter explores Article 45 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), which provides for the establishment of a European Defence Agency (EDA). Article 45(1) TEU lists the tasks of the EDA, which are already outlined in Article 42(3) second subparagraph second sentence TEU. These tasks can be divided into those that aim at identifying military capabilities, objectives, and needs, and those that concern cooperation in armaments. Moreover, in accordance with Article 3 of the Protocol on Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the EDA has the role of assessing participating MS’ contributions with regard to capabilities. Pursuant to Article 45(2) first sentence TEU, it is for each Member State to decide whether to participate in the EDA. Decisions within the EDA are adopted by the Steering Board, where all participating MS are equally represented and the Commission participates without a voting right.