EU Defence Cooperation Research Articles

EU arms collaboration, procurement, and offsets: the impact of the war in Ukraine

ABSTRACT In the last twenty years, the EU has made increasingly greater efforts to boost defence cooperation among MS. To strengthen the EDTIB and avoid duplication of capabilities, the EU has encouraged “European preference” in arms procurement and MS’ defence collaborative projects, also by seeking to expunge defence offsets from the single market. Against this backdrop, on 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. What impact has the war in Ukraine had on EU defence cooperation? Has the war impacted MS in a similar fashion or unevenly, reinforcing defence integration dynamics for some, while kickstarting disintegration for others? Two years on, a thorough analysis of the impact of the war on EU defence cooperation is still missing. This paper fills this gap by exploring three levels of analysis – arms collaboration, arms procurement, and offsets – and by comparing pre-invasion evidence with data from the post-invasion period. The analysis suggests that the Russo-Ukrainian war has negatively impacted EU defence cooperation, potentially increasing both fragmentation and non-EU dependencies. However, although MS’ threat perception and their ability to reap industrial benefits remain important to explain EU defence cooperation, integration or disintegration dynamics do not neatly map onto the geographical or size divides identified by the literature.

Hedging their bets? The case for a European pillar in NATO

ABSTRACT President Donald Trump has adopted a critical position on NATO, raising concerns of an American abandonment of its obligations to Europe’s defence. The severity of Trump’s position is unusual, but some of his concerns are of long-standing and likely to be voiced in some form by his successor in the White House. American criticism and equivocation has led the European allies to engage in various forms of hedging. Some of these strategies are designed to keep the US attached to NATO; others bypass the alliance – cultivating either bilateral links to the US or a strengthening of EU defence cooperation. Hedging, whatever its form, is potentially damaging to alliance effectiveness and cohesion. In that light, NATO’s interests are better served by a strategy which builds upon the NATO-EU relationship and which advertises the benefits of European effort within NATO itself. To that end, we argue in favour of a reformulation of an old but much misunderstood idea – that of NATO’s “European pillar.” Here, existing contributions to European defence provided by the allies through NATO are crucial. Such an arrangement need not, therefore, entail any elaborate institutional engineering, but it does require political and strategic clarity.

The EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation in defence: Keeping Sleeping Beauty from snoozing

In December 2017 the EU established Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). Previously an unused instrument in the Treaty on European Union, PESCO enables able and willing EU member states to develop their defence capabilities and improve the deployability of their forces through common projects. This article argues that PESCO has the potential to become a game changer for EU defence cooperation and could help the Union to achieve strategic autonomy, but only if (1) the participating member states do more than the minimum required to fulfil their binding PESCO commitments, (2) the implementation of PESCO is monitored rigorously at the national and EU levels and (3) there are consequences for those member states that fail to meet their commitments. Otherwise, PESCO will become—like the Battlegroups before it—another oversold EU security and defence initiative that failed to meet the expectations placed on it.

EU defence cooperation after Brexit: what role for the UK in the future EU defence arrangements?

The UK has traditionally played an ambivalent role in European security and defence policymaking. With Brexit, the EU loses one of its two serious military players. On the other hand, it has been liberated from the constraints imposed by London on the Common Security and Defence Policy, and this has created a new dynamism behind the defence project. There has been comparatively little commentary on the defence implications of Brexit, and the UK has been less than forthcoming in making concrete proposals for an ongoing UK–EU partnership. Both sides assert that they wish to maintain a strong cooperative relationship after Brexit, but the outlines of such an arrangement remain very unclear. This article suggests that the UK will have more to lose than the EU from any failure to reach agreement, and that UK ambivalence about links between the Common Security and Defence Policy and NATO will prove to be a major sticking point.

The Future of EU Defence Cooperation from a French Perspective

The Future of EU Defence Cooperation from a French Perspective

Britain's coalition government and EU defence cooperation: undermining British interests

The formation of a coalition government by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, combined with the need for important cuts to Britain's armed forces has raised significant uncertainties about Britain's attitude to defence cooperation within the European Union. Since taking office the coalition, while grappling with the implications of Britain's fiscal challenges, has shown an unprecedented interest in strengthening bilateral defence collaborations with certain European partners, not least France. However, budgetary constraints have not induced stronger support for defence cooperation at the EU level. On the contrary, under the new government, Britain has accelerated its withdrawal from the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). This article assesses the approach of the coalition to the CSDP. It argues that, from the perspective of British interests, the need for EU defence cooperation has increased over the last decade and that the UK's further withdrawal from EU efforts is having a negative impact. The coalition is undermining a framework which has demonstrated the ability to improve, albeit modestly, the military capabilities of other European countries. In addition, by sidelining the EU at a time when the UK is forced to resort more extensively to cost-saving synergies in developing and maintaining its own armed forces, David Cameron's government is depriving itself of the use of potentially helpful EU agencies and initiatives—which the UK itself helped set up. Against the background of deteriorating European military capabilities and shifts in US priorities, the article considers what drove Britain to support EU defence cooperation over a decade ago and how those pressures have since strengthened. It traces Britain's increasing neglect of the CSDP across the same period, the underlying reasons for this, and how the coalition's current stance of disengagement is damaging Britain's interests.