Suchergebnisse

Since the launch of the first-ever EU naval operation in 2008, the ongoing Operation Atalanta off the Horn of Africa, EU naval forces have operated primarily in Europe's vicinity or in regions in which great-power tensions have been low. Yet, the Union has also begun to seek a naval role for itself in more sensitive regions, namely the Indo-Pacific, via the new Coordinated Maritime Presences concept. This article analyses the EU's plans to play a more visible naval role in the Indo-Pacific, and argues that the extension of this concept to the region would raise the EU's level of ambition as a naval actor. However, the EU's ability to be a meaningful maritime security provider in the Indo-Pacific depends on the EU countries coming closer to seeing eye-to-eye on how the Union should approach China, and on their willingness to send vessels to the Indo-Pacific.

This article analyses the process through which Operation Sophia came into being. The EU's on-going anti-smuggling naval operation in the Mediterranean, Sophia was launched during the height of the 2015 migration crisis. The article argues that Sophia is essentially an Italian strategy to deal with the security and humanitarian aspects of the Mediterranean migration problem. It was in 2013 that Italy first proposed an EU naval operation to tackle human smuggling and trafficking in the Mediterranean. However, the idea collapsed because other EU member states saw illegal migration in the Mediterranean as mainly a national problem facing Italy. In the spring of 2015 the European Commission revisited the proposal as part of its 10-point plan to deal with the migration problem. This time it succeeded because Italy's partners could no longer oppose it without appearing callous towards the plight of the migrants.

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.

Since 2003, the European Union (EU) has launched eight military operations with an executive mandate in the framework of its European (now Common) Security and Defence Policy (ESDP/CSDP), all of which have utilized deterrence to fulfil their missions. Some have done so implicitly by having a mission that requires them to keep certain actors from doing something unwanted, whilst others have done so explicitly by having deterrence clearly mentioned as one of their core tasks in their mandates. Despite this, deterrence in the context of CSDP has been an almost totally neglected subject in the academic literature. Furthermore, the EU itself has tended to take the deterrence effect of CSDP operations for granted, which is dangerous because it may blind it to potential problems that may in fact be undermining their credibility. This article seeks to launch a more focused discussion on deterrence in the context of EU security policy by analysing the credibility of CSDP operations' deterrence postures. Based on findings from case studies on operations Althea and Atalanta, it argues that CSDP operations' deterrence postures lack credibility because they have insufficient resources for taking care of their deterrence tasks. Furthermore, they do not communicate threats effectively.

After the 13 November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France invoked Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the so-called mutual assistance clause, for the first time since the 2009 Lisbon Treaty introduced it. France wanted its European Union (EU) partners to assist it in fighting the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, which was behind the attacks. However, France's decision to invoke the article, which had previously been seen as merely symbolic with little actual relevance, is puzzling. The reason for this is that France could have also sought assistance through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) much more robust Article 5 or the EU's solidarity clause, which is specifically designed for responding to terrorist attacks. However, France chose Article 42(7) over the alternatives because it was more flexible and came with less political baggage. It also enabled France to demand that other Member States make additional contributions to its various foreign and security policy actions around the world to alleviate the burden they were placing on it. In other words, it allowed France to call for 'enforced solidarity', which went beyond what it could have demanded from its partners in less extraordinary circumstances.

In April 2014, the European Union (EU) launched EUFOR RCA, a military bridging operation that provided temporary support to the United Nations (UN) in achieving a safe and secure environment in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), until March 2015. After EUFOR's mandate concluded, the union launched a follow up military advisory mission, EUMAM RCA, to improve the CAR armed forces' capacities and solidify EUFOR's achievements. However, the deployment processes of both EUFOR and EUMAM were characterized by a paradox: on the one hand, their planning processes were quick and effective; on the other hand, their force generation processes were prolonged and difficult. What explains this paradox? This article argues that, in the case of both missions, there was a mismatch between EU Member States' desire to act and their willingness to invest resources in those actions, that is, an intentions-reality gap. Due to the CAR's humanitarian emergency and France's appeal for burden-sharing, a sense of 'collective obligation' drove EU Member States to approve the deployment of EUFOR and EUMAM politically. However, since most Member States had no direct interests at stake in the CAR, they felt no equal sense of obligation to contribute to these efforts.