Abstract

Since the summer of 2016 a number of political initiatives signalled a significant shift in European defence cooperation, with a return to the EU as the vehicle of choice for defence co-operation. Given the prior lack of effectiveness of EU defence, and the trends observed in the past decade where member states have opted for co-operation outside the EU’s framework, how can we explain this movement to pursue more defence integration through the EU? Using a public policy lens and contributing to the scholarship on ‘Europeanisation’ dynamics, this paper challenges the literature’s focus on structural explanations linking external crises and reinforcement of EU defence co-operation, by putting agents at the heart of the process. Analysing the political game that EU institutions and member state actors have engaged in since 2014, we examine which actors had an interest in pushing for the EU to take on more responsibility in defence, why, and how a consensus was made possible on issues that were previously well-known for creating divisions.

A Research Fellow for Defence Economics and Procurement at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Dr Lucie Béraud-Sudreau is responsible for the collection and assessment of data on defence budgets and defence industry for The Military Balance and Military Balance +. She holds a PhD, comparing French and Swedish arms export policies. Before joining the IISS , she was a guest researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and an analyst at the French Ministry of Defence.

All are welcome.