The development of European Union (EU) civil protection cooperation highlights important issues in the debate on the internal-external security nexus. It points to the increased transnationalization of threats usually assigned to the field of 'internal' security, but it also presents researchers with a puzzle: despite the relatively rapid development of civil protection cooperation, there is still substantial disagreement among the EU member states as to how it should continue to develop. Applying an analytical framework based on neo-institutional organization theory and the study of organizational 'fields', this article explores two questions: What is the institutional basis for member states' diverging positions on the future direction of EU civil protection? and How may these positions affect the current development of EU civil protection? Our analysis draws upon empirical evidence from civil protection practice in Spain, Sweden and the EU, including official documents in the form of bills and laws, policy papers and elite interviews. We find that the basis for member states' diverging positions on the future of EU civil protection is rooted in conflicting national institutional logics of civil protection. No logic has become dominant at the EU level, suggesting that as long as multiple institutional logics continue to coexist, disagreement on the future development of European level civil protection cooperation will persist.
This chapter analyses if the EU is developing a defence union, and what that would imply for the EU. In order to analyse the development of EU defence policy since 2016, this chapter first discusses what measures would need to be in place in order for the EU to have a defence union, given previous literature on defence union. Then it analyses the development from 2016 to 2022. The conclusion is that the EU so far has not developed a defence union, even though the traits of union in EU security and defence policy have increased. In particular, three aspects found are of importance. The first is the European Defence Fund, the second the common capability development, that in combination with islands of specialization increase future possibilities of specialization and burden sharing; and the third some of the PESCO-projects which indicate defence of the member states within their own territory.
Taking its departure in the concept of strategic culture, this book answers the question of why European countries decide either to participate or not in international military operations. This volume examines strategic culture and its relation to justifications of decisions made by France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom with regard to four different operations: Operation Enduring Freedom ISAF in Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq, Operation Unified Protector in Libya, and EU Navfor/Atalanta outside Somalia. In this work the authors closely analyse the role of civil-military relations with regard to decisions about participation.
Departing from Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022, this article analyses the OSCE-based security order that prevailed since the Cold War and that later was formalised in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The first conclusion is that the OSCE-based European security order was successively weakened, and at the longest can be said to have functioned until 2014. The second conclusion is that this security order will not reappear even if the OSCE survives the consequences of the war. The article then analyses the partially parallel development of the EU as a security actor in Europe, and the potential of the EU to become a node in a new European security order. The third and fourth conclusions are that the EU has the potential of being a node in a new European security order, but that it will also need to become a node in a larger global order.
European integration has increased to encompass security-related policies. One such policy is defense industry policy, which traditionally has been a national concern rooted in defense and security policy. Efforts have been made since the 1990s to create a European defense industry market. However, there have been different ideas of how this goal should be achieved or which model for state–industry relations the market should rest on. Using Sweden to illustrate the development, this article argues that for the Europeanization of defense industry policy, marketization has played a vital role. Building on official documents and interviews, the article analyzes the efforts to create a European defense industry market, marketization of Swedish defense industry policy, and the increased interaction between Swedish and European defense industry policy processes. The analysis also shows domestic challenges that the processes of Europeanization and marketization have brought about.
The development of defence activities related to the European Union has been rapid since the end of the Cold War. The creation of the European Defence Agency (EDA) in 2004 might contribute to greater coherence in the Union’s defence related activities. This article investigates the development that has enabled the creation of the EDA and what these developments mean to the study of European foreign policy. The authors argue - in opposition to Brian White (2001) - that defence should, by 2005, at least be seen as a fourth sub-system of European foreign policy.
This paper describes and analyses three types of European strategic response since the year 2017 by European governments and the EU in response to US strategic restraint and conditioned by Brexit. The three types of response we label “liberal wintering”, “a stronger Europe” and “a broader coalition”. The paper links strategic response to strategic agency and strategic autonomy leading on to two main conclusions: First, that Brexit has done more to promote than to restrain the development of European common security and defence, both within the EU and when involving nations outside of the EU, such as the UK. Second, that the new broader European security and defence structures open the door to new forms of cooperation, for example between the Nordic countries.
In this article we argue that organizations and organizing activities lie at the very heart of the European integration process. Cross-pillar issues require an analytical framework that allows one to study the interplay between the market and security spheres of European integration, including how supranational and intergovernmental actors, private and public, interact with each other. By using sociological institutionalism and its notion of how organizations are institutionalized, we analyse the organizational complexity in the multifaceted policy area of armaments, without losing theoretical clarity.