Description
25 years after the inception of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), decision-making procedures and dedicated institutional structures have been created, operations and missions deployed, military and civilian capabilities developed. With Russia’s war in Ukraine, the defence policy debate has shifted from crisis management operations abroad to defending member states’ territory in case of aggression. Treaty provisions and CSDP’s institutional infrastructure would allow such shift. If this is a correct description of EU’s defence policy at the moment, a number of questions emerge. Would this shift from a CSDP servicing the EU’s interests abroad towards a policy on defending the EU itself survive the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine? What other factors may be at play supporting this shift? Importantly, we often hear practitioners and scholars alike asking whether there is political willingness underpinning such a policy shift, however there is very little elaboration in what this actually means. Taking stock of these pertinent issues, the article commences with briefly mapping out this shift in EU’s security and defence policy. It continues with a critical discussion of the different endogenous and exogenous factors that may impact on this change of strategic directions. The article’s main empirical analysis fleshes out how the political willingness behind this shift has manifested, investigating political statements by national and EU leaders as well as media output. The concluding remarks further problematise the question of political willingness by examining how the public opinion, the citizens of member states themselves, may feel about this strategic shift and why this matters.
