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Cini: European Union Politics 2e

Chapter 15

Europe's New Defence Agency

Defence policies of the EU has been one of the least developed policy areas, mainly due to the unwillingness of member states to cede sovereignty over defence to the supranational institution of the EU. Having realised how weak European governments were from the Balkan wars of the 1990s, this experience encouraged them to work towards greater co-ordination of defence policies. In this sense, 2004 was a landmark year as the EU took over the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia from NATO (Keohane 2004). In addition, EU governments agreed in April 2004 that the EU should be able to use nine 'battle groups' by 2007 in the context of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Each consists of 1,500 troops, and is deployable within two weeks for international intervention and tasks reaching up to full-combat situations. The battle g r oup project is not to be confused with the European Rapid Action Force which concerns up to 60,000 soldiers, deployable for at least a year, and which takes one to two months to deploy. The battle group are instead meant for more rapid and shorter deployment in international crises, probably preparing the ground for a larger and more traditional force to replace them in due time. For the necessary purchases and development of military equipment, the European Defence Agency was created " 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 ESDP as it stands now and develops in the future" (www.eda.eu.int/index.htm) .

Web Links

European Defence Agency (EDA)
www.eda.eu.int/index.htm

Centre for European Reform (CER) – EU Security and Defence Policy
www.cer.org.uk/defence_new/index_defence_new.html

Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) – EU Neighbourhood, Foreign and Security Policy
www.ceps.be/Article.php?article_id=17

Institute for Security Studies – An Institute at the Service of CFSP
www.iss-eu.org/

European Union Satellite Centre – Observing from Space
www.eusc.org/

NATO-EU Relations
www.nato.int/issues/nato-eu/index.html

Further Learning Resources

Special Issues of The Brown Journal of World Affairs: Brussels and Beyond: European Union Foreign and Security Policy
www.bjwa.org/index.php?issue=9.2.

Smith, Michael, E. (2004), 'Toward a theory of EU foreign policy-making: multi-level governance, domestic politics, and national adaptation to Europe's common foreign and security policy', Journal of European Public Policy, Vol.11, No.4, pp.740-58.

Missirolieu, Antonio (2003), 'EU Enlargement and CFSP/ESDP', Journal of European Public Policy, Vol.15, No.1, pp.1-16.