The European Draft Constitutional Treaty and the Future of the European Defence Initiative: A Question of Flexibility

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges to the drafters of the EU Constitution came in the area of security and defence. It is paradoxical that, in the event, this proved to be the policy area in which clear and substantial progress was arguably the most consensual. Such progress was by no means predictable. Two huge coordination challenges arose: military capabilities and security policy itself. The ongoing tensions between the different dyads of EU Member States – allies and neutrals, Atlanticists and Europeanists, ‘extroverts’ and ‘introverts’, ‘bigs’ and ‘smalls’, professionals and conscripts – hardly augured well for a smooth constitutional ride. Moreover, in the context of enlargement, the necessary stages towards a concomitant deepening were far from obvious. The military capabilities of most accession states were in a different league from those of many EU Member States. Moreover, the Iraq war of 2003 appeared to have driven a further wedge between ‘new’ and ‘old’ Europeans. There were therefore likely to be fierce constitutional squabbles not only over decision-making but also over the very scope of the ESDP. Meanwhile, on the ground, in 2004 for the first time ever, EU military forces, under an EU flag, were engaging in – and preparing to engage in further – combat missions. If the ESDP was to make progress towards the stark new world of operational capacity, new forms of flexible cooperation would be required – forms which would preserve the EU’s political unity and control while allowing variegated ‘coalitions of the willing’ to engage in real military operations, forms which would help the disparate – and growing – range of agencies and actors involved in this policy sector to coordinate decision-making, not only in the European Foreign Affairs Review 9: 000–000, 2004. © 2004 Kluwer Law International.