Description
This research focuses on the changing nature of the maritime security operations of the European Union (EU). The swift from an anti-piracy mission (Atalanta) to a typical naval warfare operation (Aspides), formally launched on February 19, 2024, will be explored in this article.
This mission will be discussed by looking at the strategic, political, and operational perspectives of the various EU's member states. A particular emphasis will be given to the different policies and practices of Northern, Central, and Southern countries, the different responses of large and small navies, and the neutral states. This approach will allow the research to contribute to the growing research agenda focused on ‘small navies’, often disregarded by previous literature.
Maritime security is now recognised to be a crucial area of EU security and is also a vibrant field within current academic discourse. This dimension is now recognised as being fundamental to national security and European security.
This paper will mainly employ a qualitative approach by exploring a broad corpus of primary and secondary in fifteen different languages and over forty different anonymous elite interviews with former and serving high-ranked policymakers, military personnel, diplomats, and politicians across all the EU’s member states. A similar approach will involve historical, geopolitical, and strategic analyses aimed at finding the rationales behind the changing character of the EU's maritime security operations, particularly in the latest Aspides.
Finally, this research will inform the academic debate, civil servants, and military personnel in Brussels and, to a broader extent, in the various countries part of the European Union regarding the development of the 2024 Operation Aspides, the existing trends, and the likely implications for each country in the increasingly changing global maritime domain.
