‘Managing Mandates:
Mandate overlap in the institutional architecture of the
Common Security and Defence Policy of the European
Union’
MA Thesis in: European Studies: ‘Governing Europe’ Graduate School of Humanities
Universiteit van Amsterdam
23.384 Words Used
Author: Martijn Christiaan Backus
UvA-id: 10247007 @: Martijnbackus@mail.com
Main Supervisor: Dhr. Dr. C.W. (Carlos) Reijnen Second Supervisor: Dhr. Dr. M.M. (Matthijs) Lok
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... 2 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... 4 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ... 7 INTRODUCTION: BOUNDARIES OF DEFENCE ... 8 CHAPTER 1: THEORIES AND FRAMEWORK ... 12 CLASSIC INTEGRATION THEORIES ... 12 THE GOVERNANCE APPROACH ... 15 INSTITUTIONALISM ... 16 Rational Choice Institutionalism ... 16 Sociological Institutionalism ... 17 Historical Institutionalism ... 18 INSTITUTIONAL OVERLAP ... 20 CONCLUSION: SEQUENCE AND MANDATE ... 24 CHAPTER 2: HISTORICAL BUILD-UP & INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE ... 25 1949-1990 ... 26 Peace as Principle ... 26 Rearmament of Europe and Transatlantic Cooperation. ... 27 Cooperation through Competition ... 29 1990-2016 ... 31 Framing European Defence ... 31 Europe’s Defence Industry ... 33 Commission versus Member States ... 36 From ESDP to CSDP ... 38 Current Institutional Architecture ... 41CONCLUSION: FROM NATO TO EU ... 46
CHAPTER 3: MANDATES AND OVERLAP ... 48
DOCTRINE AND FRAMING DEFENCE ... 49
CONTRIBUTING TO CSDP ... 51
ARMAMENTS ... 53
FINANCING ... 55
RESEARCH ... 56
OPERATIONS ... 59
CONCLUSION: MORE TASKS, MORE INSTITUTIONS ... 62
CHAPTER 4: THE CASE OF MALI ... 64
EXPLAINING THE MALIAN CRISIS ... 64
RESULTS OF MANDATE OVERLAP ... 68
Doctrine and Framing Defence ... 68 Contributing to CSDP ... 69 Armaments ... 70 Financing ... 71 Research ... 72 Monitoring ... 73 Operations ... 74 CONCLUSION: DISPARITY OF APPROACH ... 76 Disadvantages ... 77 Advantages ... 78 CONCLUSION: MISMANAGED MANDATES ... 79 SOURCES ... 83
List of Abbreviations
AC Armaments Committee
BG Battle Group
CFSP Common Foreign and Security policy CIVCOM Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management COREPER Committee of Permanent Representatives
CMC Crisis Management Concept
CMPD Crisis Management and Planning Directorate CNAD Conference of National Armament Directors CONOPS Concepts of Operations
CPCC Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability CSDP Common Security and Defence Policy
DG Directorate General
DPB Defence Production Board DPC Defence Production Committee DSG Deputy Secretary General
EADS European Aeronautics and Space Company
EC European Commission
ECJ European Court of Justice
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
EDA European Defence Agency
EDC European Defence Community
ECO Directorate Economic and Global Issues EEAS European External Action Service EES European Security Strategy EGS European Global Strategy EPC European Political Cooperation
EU European Union
EUMC European Union Military Committee EUMS European Union Military Staff EUTM European Union Training Mission
ESDI European Security and Defence Identity ESDP European Security and Defence Policy
FINABEL French-Italian-Dutch-German-Belgian-Luxemburg Land forces FINBAIR France-Italy-Belgium-Netherlands Air Forces
GDP Gross Domestic Product
H.I. Historical Institutionalism
IEPG Independent European Programme Group IMD Initiating Military Directive
LoI Letter of Intent
MAS Military Agency for Standardisation MilRep Military Representative
MPSB Military Production and Supply Board MSA Military Standardisation Agency MSO Military Strategic Options NAC North Atlantic Council
NAMSA NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NMSSS NATO Maintenance and Supply Service System NSO NATO Standardisation Organisation
OHQ Operation Headquarters
OCCAR Organisme Cojointe de Cooperation en Matiere d’Armament
OPLAN Operation Plan
OSCE Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe PFCA Political Framework for Crisis Approach
POL Directorate Political Affairs PSC Political and Security Committee R&D Research and Development
SAC Standard Armaments Committee
SG Secretary General of the Council
TCC Temporary Council Committee
TEU Treaty on European Union
TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
USA United States of America
WEAG Western European Armaments Group WEAO Western European Armaments Organisation
List of Tables and Figures
Table 1: NATO and CSDP institutional juxtapositions p. 40 Table 2: Mandate overlap in doctrine and framing of defence p. 51-2 Table 3: Mandate overlap in contributing to CSDP p. 53
Table 4: Mandate overlap in armament policy p. 55-6
Table 5: Mandate overlap in finances p. 56-7
Table 6: Mandate overlap in research p. 58
Table 7: Mandate overlap in monitoring p. 59-60
Table 8: Mandate overlap in operations p. 61-2
Table 9: Overview of overlapping institutions p. 63
Figure 1: Overview of Armament Institutions 1949-2005 p. 31
Figure 2: Institutional structure of CSDP p. 43
Figure 3: The Crisis Response Planning Cycle p. 44
Introduction: Boundaries of Defence
‘The perfection of order consists of the conjunction of force and law, but for this to be the case, law must govern force.’1
-J.J. Rousseau, The State of War
As many people know but often forget, the European Union (EU) started out as a peace-project between European nations to render the possibilities and atrocities of war impossible. After the Second World War, this project took a functional form, taking specific tasks of European governments and transferring them to a higher regulating authority. Over the decades, the initial European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) would grow and transform into the European Union and gained considerable more power through the additional tasks that were transferred to the EU, accumulating into many different policy-fields that the EU now governs. Besides agricultural, monetary or environmental integration, a recent shift of mentalities in Europe has led to the formation of a remarkable policy-field for Europe: the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).
To organise and manage the growing number of tasks, the EU specifically creates institutions to execute the delegated governmental tasks, guiding and participating in the decision-making processes. States, however, are reluctant in transferring important national tasks as they fear losing sovereignty of national politics and decisions. Therefore, governments place these institutions under specific rules and procedures, drawing, boundaries of the institution’s power and these rules become part of European Law and the treaty framework. These rules make sure institutions have clear functions and tasks to avoid overstepping their boundaries.
More tasks, however, has led to more institutions in the EU and has created an elaborate institutional web of mandates. Institution-building is an effective way for integrating difficult political topics because it saves money for the Member States without the fear of losing sovereignty, also, it adds credibility and legitimacy to the European Union. The large number of tasks transferred to the EU since 1999 has led
1 J.J. Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, Hacket Publishing, Indianapolis, 2011,
to the creation of nine distinctly European security and defence institutions, covering a wide variety of tasks. However, the rapid establishment, the short time span and the many institutional tasks has made CSDP an intricate and interwoven institutional field, where multiple institutions govern similar areas of defence governance.
This phenomenon is called mandate overlap and works as a pragmatics institutional safety net to achieve specific goals to increase cooperation among the different European armies, industries and military cultures. Looking at the
overlapping tasks through a legal lens, show that the overlapping and duplicated tasks undermines the concerning who executes the delegated tasks and challenges the coherence and consistency of CSDP itself.2
On the other hand, overlapping
institutions or tasks can also reinforce a certain task or ambition as has been noted in other fields with overlapping institutions such as environmental, labour and consumer protection or human rights.3
Moreover, the director of the EU institute for Security Studies, Antonio Missiroli, interpreted the overlapping institutions could function as ‘overlapping and interlocking ovals –much like a Venn-diagram- rather than
concentrated circles and offer the kind of variable geometry that the Union needs when dealing with crisis and conflict’.4
This is one way of looking at overlap although it seems more sensible to think that the institutional overlap and duplication of tasks does not contribute to clarity in times of crisis and conflict. In order to become a coherent policy, mandates need to be managed to match institutional tasks and will make the institutional architecture of CSDP more efficient. Therefore, setting clear boundaries is important to avoid
confusion and conflict of interests, especially regarding institutions that may influence or determine the rationale for war. Military integration in the EU materialised after experimenting in different cooperative settings over the last seven decades and is a very interesting topic since there are no comparable precedents and the EU embodies peace due to its founding principle.
In line of finding answers to harnessing war, establishing peace and setting boundaries for those who make wars, Jean-Jacques Rousseau sporadically wrote
2 M. Trybus, ‘European Union Law and Defence Integration’, Hart, Oxford, 2005, p.
94.
3 K. Raustiala & D.G. Victor, ‘The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic
Resources’, International Organisation, Spring, 2004, p. 7.
4 A. Misseroli, ‘On Juncker’s List: improving EU external action’, Issue Alert, no.
essays about wars. His ideas are most notably articulated in his State of War, established by Grace Roosevelt in 1987, where he analyses the origins of war.
Rousseau argues that war is a product of states, not of man, and that politics prevented wars by finding consensus. To this extent, Rousseau contradicts the later military philosopher Clausewitz by stating that politics is a continuation of warfare by any other means.5
This is visible in a statement Rousseau wrote on Abbé St. Pierre’s work,
Projet Pour Rendre la Paix Perpetuelle, where he argues that: ‘the powers of Europe stand to each other strictly in a state of war, and that all the separate treaties between them are rather a temporary truce than a real power’.6
However pessimistic, Rousseau was of opinion that peace could be achieved, but ‘only in such a form of
federal government shall unite nations by bonds similar to those which already unite individual members, and place them under the authority of Law’.7 Clearly inspired on
St. Pierre’s work, peace could only be achieved if the European states relinquished their sovereignty and vested it in a higher federal body. This had to be placed under law that sets clear rules and boundaries because ‘political institutions need fixed
measures and boundaries: if their proper size is undefined, it can always grow bigger.8
Similarities between the answers of Rousseau, the post-war ECSC and he contemporary European Union to establish peace are easily seen. The political efforts of integration asked f has thus far avoided conflicts or wars in Europe by placing transferred institutional tasks under the legal framework of the European Union. As is the case with CSDP, boundaries of institutional tasks in the EU are fixed in
international law but is being challenged by the multitude of institutional arrangements that undermine previous agreements on division of tasks.
This thesis focus on the question: what are the difficulties of military
integration in the EU, to what extent has this process led to mandate overlap and what are the consequences? To approach the institutional aspects of this question, the first chapter will analyse several influential ideas and theories concerning European
5 J.J. Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, Hacket Publishing, Indianapolis, 2011,
p. xxvii.
6 J.J. Rousseau, ‘A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe and The State of War,
translated by: C.E. Vaughn, Constable & Co, London, 1917, p. 18.
7 T.L. Knusten, A History of International Relations Theory, Manchester University
Press, New York, 1997, p. 136.
8 G Blanchet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s contribution to International Relations
Integration and will reveal in detail why historical institutionalism is chosen as primary approach of this thesis. Among other reasons, this approach is taken to comprehend where security and defence institutions derived from and to understand the role of time and sequences of institution-building. After this theoretical
framework, the second chapter of this thesis will analyse the institutional development of defence cooperation, starting with the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation’s founding reason to rearm Europe for an eventual communist advance and will end with the most recent Security Strategy of 2016. When the historical analysis showed the constraints and factors that stimulated defence cooperation and integration, the third chapter will take the current institutional architecture and compare the mandates of institutions within CSDP. This is done in seven distinct fields of defence governance: doctrine and framing of defence, Recommendations to CSDP, Armament policy, Finances, Research, Monitoring and Operations. After the overlapping tasks will be placed in systematic tables, the fourth chapter will try to connect the overlap to a case-study. The Malian Crisis of 2012-2013 is taken as it is a recent case that has, unfortunately, not received much attention. This chapter should distil into a conclusion whether institutional overlap is either advantageous or disadvantageous. As is tradition, this thesis will sum up the acquired information about the long development of military integration and will try to answer the research question to what extent mandates overlap in this field.
Chapter 1: Theories and Framework
There are many different ways of perceiving and understanding cooperation in the European Union; all perspective contribute to different but valuable explanation of how European integration works. Notwithstanding, institutionalist theory is taken as the primary perspective to research the mandate overlap in this thesis. As will be shown below, this theory comprises different perspectives and has been very fertile in understanding the role and functioning of institutions. To show the value of this approach, a short overview of classical theories about European integration will illustrate how theories evolved, but eventually failed to explain certain changing aspects of the highly unique organisation. Institutions became the norm of EU
governance and also became to occupy critical positions in CSDP, this ever-changing nature of the EU led researchers to interdisciplinary research, incorporating theories from other fields and have been vital in understanding the contemporary EU.
Classic integration theories
The first theories carried specific ideas on how peace could be achieved on the European continent but differed teleologically about the role of states and to what extent sovereignty would be transferred. Since there were no comparable precedents, most discussions about how to achieve peace were led by experienced and high-placed national politicians and academics. One answer to render war useless came from David Mitrany who proposed the creation of a whole series of separate international functional agencies, taking individual technical tasks out of control of governments, causing an integration process that enmeshes national governments in a spreading web of international activities.9
Another influential figure, Altiero Spinelli, is known for his federalist manifesto that he wrote in an Italian prison where he was held most of the Second World War. Spinelli sought answers to dispel wars among states and formulated his theory around the clear transfer of political authority to a higher body as a depoliticizing process that takes powers away from national governments. A third influential intellectual was Jean Monnet, who thought that taking important aspects away from the nation state, such as economic and military
9 I. Bache, S. George & S. Bulmer, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford
production, would prevent wars. Monnet saw the need to create a large and common market, a huge continental market on the European scale that would be developed by supranational institutions that would adopt common economic policies and rational planning procedures.10
Pushed by the request of the USA to cooperate in order to receive the Marshall-plan, all ideas carried influence in the creation of a free-standing agency that was to become the High Authority of the ECSC and would develop into the European Commission.11
After the establishment of the ECSC that transferred functional tasks from governments to the ECSC, focus of research shifted from how to establish
cooperation among states, to why states would cooperate, integrate and mingle. One of the first to analyse this insight was Ernst Haas who formulated a theory in the 1960s about European integration known as neofunctionalism. Neofunctionalism sought to explain how and why states would voluntarily mingle with their neighbours and lose their functional attributes of sovereignty while acquiring new techniques from resolving conflict between themselves.12
An important aspect of
neofunctionalism was that integration would be pushed by spill-over effects, as initial steps towards integration would be taken, it would eventually take on a life on its own and sweep governments along further than they anticipated.13
However, in the 1960s, it seemed that that integration was slowing down and that Member States were more in control than spill-over predicted. This led to liberal intergovernmentalism as developed by Stanley Hoffmans’ and Andrew Moravcsik’s work on intergovernmentalism. Hoffmann criticised the dominant theory of
neofunctionalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and argued that governments are the ultimate arbiters of key decisions. In his view, governments of states were uniquely powerful because they possessed legal sovereignty as described in the European treaties where governments represent possess the political legitimacy as the only democratic elected actors in the integration progress.14
Moravcsik built on this approach and added that the primary determinant of the preferences of governments
10 I. Bache, S. George & S. Bulmer, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2011, p. 7
11 Ibid, p. 9
12 E. Haas, ‘The Study of Regional Integration: reflections on the joy and
anguish of pre-theorizing’, International Organisation, no. 4, 1970, p. 610.
13 I. Bache et al, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2011, pp. 8-9.
was the balance between economic interests within the domestic arena, and that these conflicting national interests were reconciled in the negotiation forum of the Council of Ministers.15
This theory, nonetheless, failed to explain why influence from supranational actors had increased and why national political preferences might be less clearly defined and less vigorously defended by their delegations. Besides, economic issues are not always predominant in intergovernmental decision-making.16
Therefore, these theories did not constitute a solid approach to analyse security and defence integration for several reasons. First, military and defence form the core of national sovereignty and is therefore not easily applicable to the
teleological aspects of functionalism or federalism that seeks answers to a pooling of that exact sovereignty.17
When states would voluntarily transfer their national security to a supranational body, it loses its accountability and guarantee of its inhabitants’ safety and security that it would otherwise enjoy nationally. Second, seeing defence solely as political or economic interest formation will lead to an incomplete picture due to a small scope as is the case with liberal
intergovernmentalism. Indeed, the political side is closely connected to the economic aspects of national defence industry where states are quasi-exclusive customers and may influence decision-making, but is also affected by societal wants and security perceptions. Third, other factors of integration also play important roles such as appropriate behaviour, epistemic communities, learning-processes as has been shown in constructivist and Europeanization research.18
As DeVore described European security and defence integration is determined by ‘the interactions of numerous actors
with a multitude of interests instead of cohesive actors pursuing clear objectives’, as
is often suggested by the traditional theories.19
15 I. Bache et al, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2011, p. 13.
16 T. Dyson & T. Konstadinides, ‘European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory’, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 113
17 S. Bulmer, ‘Politics in Time meets the Politics of Time’, Journal of European Public Policy, no. 2, 2009, p. 312.
18 M. Britz, ‘The Role of Marketization in the Europeanization of Defence
Industrial Policy’, Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, no. 3, 2010, p 177.
19 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
The Governance approach
With increased complexity and a rapidly expanding institutional framework in the 1990s, the governance approach offered a new scope to this new operating mode of government. As the EU materialised, topics of study moved away from why and how states integrate, to how this established order governed certain areas and how
governmental and non-governmental actors mattered in governing an environment in relation to another.20 The governance approach argues that as the process of European
integration deepened and competencies began to shift above the nation state, policy-making began to be characterised by a system of complex, multi-tiered,
geographically overlapping structures of governmental and non-governmental elites.21
This theory relies on the assumption that power centres are highly complex and involves governmental and non-governmental actors and therefore, focus is placed on the interaction of the multiple actors in a highly diffuse, complex and dynamic
institutional system of policy-making. Older theories mainly focused on the aspect of integration; the governance approach, however, notes that integration is not always the ultimate goal in the decision-making process of the EU.
Concerning governance theory and defence two problems arise. First, as some institutions are heavily co-dependant of other agencies to execute their tasks such as the European Union Military Staff and the Political and Security Committee, and heralds a more complex institutional relation that is not easily unravelled.22
The governance approach places focus on the relative importance of the institutions in a certain area of governance, but fails to focus on the institutional design. Second, flowing from the first point, literature on governance does not offer a compromised theory for an area as unique as European defence because defence does not possess a modus operandi nor a force of governance.23
The governance approach affirms that defence is a highly institutional field with a multiplicity of actors that all try to assert their legitimacy by influencing the economic and political processes. This thesis, however, places a focus on institutions and not on the governance of institutions and therefore an institutionalist approach is taken.
20 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 119.
21 T. Dyson & T. Konstadinides, ‘European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory’, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 118
22 Ibid, p. 121 23 Ibid.
Institutionalism
As a reaction to the behavioural sciences that had come to dominate the 1960s and 1970s, institutionalists argued that neither the behavioural nor the prior theories on formal institutional analysis had gone far enough and that the importance of institutions in structuring political action had been lost. Institutionalists argued that institutions do matter in understanding politics, policy and policy-making, but also sought to explain how they mattered.24 Institutions were not only defined as formal
organisations, but also as informal patters of structured interaction between groups and institutions. On these grounds, institutionalists argued that formal institutions are not neutral arenas, but that formal institutional structures and rules biased access to the political process in favour of some societal groups over others. Moreover, institutions could be autonomous political actors in their own way due to their politically oriented tasks and their influence in political environments.25
Because new institutionalism was a critique of the existing theoretical approaches of
behaviouralism, institutionalist theory comprises a variety of approaches, a realist approach, a constructivist approach and a historical approach. These strands are the most distinct varieties and emerged at roughly the same time but in relative isolation from each other.
Rational Choice Institutionalism
Rational choice institutionalism focuses on the constraints that institutional structures impose on actors and underlines the importance to identify the parameters set within the specific framework or rules.26
The great merit of rational choice
institutionalism is that this realist account takes preferences of the Member States and their sovereignty as the starting point, but it also accepts that delegating national tasks inevitably involves a loss of agency (delegation-control), so it takes the outsourcing of administrative tasks as cost-saving. Therefore, it is an actor-centred approach of rational empirical research concerning the distribution of resources based on a
24 I. Bache et al, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2011, p. 22.
25 Ibid, p. 23 26 Ibid.
utilitarian ontology.27
This theory tries to come to ‘ a series of hypotheses about
supranational autonomy […] more precise than those generated by either functionalist of intergovernmental theories’.28
This is popular approach and is widely-used in a variety of topics, including defence and security studies where it has shown that delegated tasks are often more cost-effective albeit less efficient than when governments themselves bicker for political outcomes.
Sociological Institutionalism
Contrasting the realist perspective of rational choice institutionalism is the constructivist perspective of sociological institutionalism. This strand is closely related to constructivist accounts that acknowledged that interest-based explanations continue to have validity and value but that the role of ideas has been much
neglected.29
This approach constructs around the core premises that identity is central to interest formation. Norms, in the form of rules of appropriate behaviour then form the key driver of policy choices. This entails that policy-makers favour certain policy outcomes over others, because the rules of legitimate and appropriate behaviour lie at the heart of the identities and interests of these policy-makers.30 Constructivists claim
that identity, discourse, culture and ideas are highly essential determinants of policy outcomes and that elite socialisation is a central dynamic. This concept posits that political actors are mutually constitutive and play important roles in comprehending European integration, as shared experience from previous cooperation, similar assessments among epistemic communities, and elite socialisation are major forces behind European policy-making according to this theory. 31
27 H. Dijkstra, ‘Policy-Making in EU Security and Defence: an institutional perspective’,
Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 7.
28 M. Pollack, ‘Delegation, Agency and Agenda-Setting in the European
Community’, International Organization, no. 1, 1997, p 101.
29 I. Bache et al, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2011, pp. 44-5.
30 T. Dyson & T. Konstadinides, ‘European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory’, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 114
Historical Institutionalism
Historical Institutionalism characterises an intellectual tradition that places emphasis on the argument that political relationships have to be viewed over time and argues that decision are not made according to an abstract rationality but according to constraints that are structured by pre-existing relationships. Historical institutionalism is often argued to be in between the rational and constructivist approaches because it takes formal institutions for their primary analysis like the rational institutionalist but broadens the definition of institutions to incorporate also informal constraints on behaviour such as values and behavioural norms, of which the latter are critical to the constructivist approach.32
Previous applications of Historical Institutionalism to the EU, led to a critique of intergovernmental analyses and revealed reasons for thinking that national
governments might not be entirely in control of the process of integration.33
Historical institutionalists believe that once a country, region or policy goes down a specific track, costs of reversal are very high and so it is likely that once the process has begun, a certain path dependency comes into play and steers future decisions within the limited framework of the initial decision. In this manner, events that happened in the past constrain and determine choices concerning the current institutional architecture. Changes in the institutional architecture can be in the form of creation, replacement recreating, or complete removal of institutions.34
Path dependent processes reinforce themselves and generate a particular outcome, often hindering a change of path.35 Historical institutionalists, generally
argue that after a decision has been made, it would be likely to produce unanticipated and unintentional outcomes that may occur at a considerable temporal distance from the appearance of the central cause.36
Pierson, a prominent Historical Institutionalist, notes that the significance of variables is frequently distorted when they are separated
32 P.A. Hall & R.C.R. Taylor, ‘Political Science and the Three Institutionalisms’, Political Studies, no. 5, 1996, p. 940
33 I. Bache et al, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2011, p. 25.
34 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 437.
35 I. Bache et al, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
2011, p. 26
36 P. Pierson, ‘Politics in Time: history, institutions and social analysis’, Princeton
from their temporal context.37
According to Pierson, this is increasingly the case, especially in economics and political science where ‘the time horizons of most
analysts have become increasingly restricted. In this process, we miss a lot.’38
Within studies of European security and defence, topics are often analysed with a political and economic perspectives and time horizons are short as they often handle EU defence as a novelty.39
With an emphasis on time, sequence plays an important role because we wish to know not just the ‘value of some variable’, but also the time at which the value occurred. 40
Pierson explains the importance of sequence by using what mathematicians call the Polya urn process.
‘Imagine a very large urn containing two balls, one black, one red. You remove one ball and return it to the urn with an additional ball of the same colour. You repeat this process until the urn fills up. What can we say about the eventual distribution of coloured balls in the urn?’41
The Polya urn example exhibits positive feedback processes as it reinforces a certain colour over another if it is picked early in the process and shows the
importance of how previous outcomes affects outcomes in the future.42
The many possibilities of configurations that are possible restricts the relative attractiveness of a colour picked in the previous rounds. The relative attractiveness of previous
institutional designs constraints and shapes future institutional design.
Due to these mentioned merits of this theory, historical institutionalism is taken as the primary approach in this thesis to analyse the source of European defence institutions, and to understand the previous decisions and constraints that shaped the current institutional architecture. The goal will be to find out how the institutions were created because the design can be bedevilled by the multitude of potential ways they could be configured in the absence of any consensus about how they should be
37 P. Pierson, ‘Politics in Time: history, institutions and social analysis’, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 2004, p. 1.
38 Ibid, p.79.
39 T. Dyson & T. Konstadinides, ‘European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory’, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, pp. 7-8.
40 P. Pierson, ‘Politics in Time: history, institutions and social analysis’, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 2004, p. 54.
41 Ibid, p. 17. 42 Ibid, p. 18.
organised.43
Institutional design is, after all, not only a dependent variable but also affects the way policy is made and is a reason why Member States have long preferred to keep the EU out of defence. The institutional design inevitably alters policy outcomes as early steps in a process may fundamentally restrict the range of option available to later ones.44
Institutional Overlap
The increasing density of the institutional architecture has made it difficult to decompose international institutions for study.45
Institutional relations in a highly dense institutional field has not received much attention to how the legal and intellectual framing of issues affects the relative boundaries of these institutions.46
What Raustiala named regime complexes: an array of partially overlapping
institutions that govern the same particular issue-area, is what others have named Institutional Overlap.47
Rapid institution –building, as a depoliticising and denationalising process, may facilitate overlap between institutions but is a very effective way to address rising problems efficiently and has become a renowned force in integration processes. 48
As the field fills up with similar institutions that work in the same area, possibilities arise that institutions may clash with each other. These clashes can come from different aspects of institutional design such as interest representation, resources, membership and mandate. 49
These clashes stem from the often vaguely defined boundaries that may be overstepped in order to grow in importance. This
Competence-Maximizing theory has derived from the budget-maximising theory that
43 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 434.
44 H. Dijkstra, ‘Policy-Making in EU Security and Defence: an institutional perspective’,
Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 4.
45 K. Raustiala & D.G. Victor, ‘The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic
Resources’, International Organisation, Spring, 2004, p. 5.
46 Ibid, p. 6.
47 S.C. Hoffmann, ‘Why Institutional Overlap Matters: CSDP in the European
Security Architecture’, Journal of Common Market Studies, no. 1, 2011, p 104-5
48 W.G. Werner & R.A. Wessel, ‘Internationaal en Europees Recht: een verkenning van grondslagen en kenmerken’, Europa Law Publishing, Groningen, 2011, pp. 18-19. 49 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
is most closely related to the realist and rational schools.50
This theory rests on the assumption that institutions compete with others to enhance their raison d’etre, guarantee its resources, staff and therefore its credibility, legitimacy and existence in general.51
Pollack notes that this assumption of maximising is not exclusive to rational schools but also fits broadly with other theories and perspectives such as the
neofunctionalist, intergovernmentalist and constructivist accounts.52
In the area of security and defence polities in the European Union,
competence-maximizing is especially relevant. On the side of the institutions, it is important to launch missions, as without these the institutions lose their purpose. On the other side, Member States may be more reluctant to launch operations because they have to finance the operations and supply the troops. One case made by Zwolski shows how divisions led to competition between the Commission and the Council General Secretariat over resources and competences in CFSP, undermining the overall performance and profile of the EU as actor in certain policy fields.53
In a similar way, the Commission created the European Union Military Committee (EUMC) where the Council of Ministers created a Political and Security Committee (PSC) that both cover similar goals and ambitions.54
Another example of clashes within the
institutional architecture would be the creation a unified defence market where the European Defence Agency, OCCAR and DG MARKET are concerned with.55
Overlap is also acknowledged by Dyson who notes about the similar tasks of EDA and OCCAR that: ‘due to the somewhat overlapping tasks of OCCAR and EDA, there
has been some concern about the necessity of attribution of roles and marriage of competence that makes the most of both’.56
Instead of drawing distinct boundaries
50H. Dijkstra, ‘Policy-Making in EU Security and Defence: an institutional
perspective’, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 34.
51Ibid, pp. 35-36.
52 M. Pollack, ‘The engines of European Integration: Agency, Delegation and Agenda setting in the EU’, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, p. 52.
53 K. Zwolski, ‘The External Dimension of the EU’s non-proliferation policy:
overcoming inter-institutional competition’. European Foreign Affairs Review, no. 3, 2011, p. 326.
54 H. Dijkstra, ‘Policy-Making in EU Security and Defence: an institutional perspective’,
Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 62.
55 D. Fiott, ‘The European Commission and the European Defence Agency: a
case of rivalry?’ Journal of Common Market Studies, no. 3, 2015, p. 551.
56 T. Dyson & T. Konstadinides, ‘European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory’, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 106.
between the entities about their respective competences that would make the most of both, overlapping and duplicated tasks can indeed raise concern.
Mandate overlap has several implications. First, it can lead to policy inconsistencies and incoherencies due to the unclear hierarchy and vague task descriptions that confuse ‘who does what’, and may lead to challenging these boundaries.57
Second, in legal terms, it leads to inconsistencies because the institutional development is driven by political contestation over the core rules. Discord during political bargaining over rules can result in broad and aspirational mandates where implementation of these rules is delegated to the institution itself.58
Third, overlapping institutions will demonstrate path dependency as negotiation occurs against a diverse array of prior rules developed within the specific institutional framework.59 Fourth, flowing out of the first points, overlap may lead to co-dependent
institutional interactions where the institutions resolve the overlap among its competitors and divide the tasks, resulting in a situation where overlap results in synergy among the institutions.60
Fifth, Overlap may entangle interests between several institutions if they try to maximise their mandates, resources or staff without arbitrary guidance.61
Last but most logical, overlap leads to extra costs due to the duplication of tasks.
Nonetheless, overlapping mandates also posits strengths. As Ingrid Kvalvik argued, competing institutions can possess beneficial effects, overlapping institutions that protect marine environment compete by setting best practices, work harder and achieve better results.62
Raustiala also noted beneficial effects in other areas such as human rights, labour laws and environmental protection.63
57 S.C. Hoffmann, ‘Why Institutional Overlap Matters: CSDP in the European
Security Architecture’, Journal of Common Market Studies, no. 1, 2011, p. 105.
58 K. Raustiala & D.G. Victor, ‘The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic
Resources’, International Organisation, Spring, 2004, p. 8.
59 Ibid.
60 I. Kvalvik, ‘Managing institutional overlap in the protection of marine
ecosystems on the high seas: the case of the North East Atlantic’, Ocean and
Coastal Management, no. 1, 2012, p 36.
61 H. Dijkstra, ‘Policy-Making in EU Security and Defence: an institutional perspective’,
Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, pp. 35-6.
62 I. Kvalvik, ‘Managing institutional overlap in the protection of marine
ecosystems on the high seas: the case of the North East Atlantic’, Ocean and
Coastal Management, no. 1, 2012, p. 42.
63 K. Raustiala & D.G. Victor, ‘The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic
Since mandates set the rules for an institution to follow and tasks the institutions with a specific set of goals, mandates are the primary object of study in this thesis. However, mandates, and EU law in general, are often broadly formulated to address the problems in an open and progressive manner and to increase the chance of success. Mandates set the rules of the game and needs to balance a sense of
specificity but also needs to be open to interpretation. If the mandate is too specific the institutions does not have the powers to address the problems effectively, if it is too broad, the institution has more liberty to pick its own role but also enhances the chance that it may clash with other institutions’ task descriptions.
Conclusion: sequence and mandate
As the determinants and scopes of research changed over the years, focus of research moved from why European states integrates to how this integrated Europe works, functions and is being governed. Especially nowadays, the European Union works through an elaborate maze of institutional arrangements, working groups, departments and secretariats and thus, a focus on institutions is mandatory. When several institutions are occupying a specific area of governance, overlap and duplication sets in. The historical approach places focus on time and historic constraints that affects the creation of institutions and gives tools to analyse
determinants of the development of the institutional field to trace back the origin of mandate overlap.
Although contemporary theory on mandate overlap somewhat underdeveloped, it holds potent premises about effective governance of institutions. If tasks are
duplicated in multiple environments and institutions, this may lead to higher costs, ambiguity and may result in individual interpretation of mandates if there is no arbitrary guidance. To understand how the institutional field of CSDP developed and to determine the extent to which mandates of CSDP institutions overlap, this thesis will continue with the historic analysis that takes a timespan of nearly 70 years. The previous decisions made in military cooperation and integration explains the
constraints that affected the institutional architecture. The next chapter will begin with a short overview of the diversity of intellectual explanations of factors that pushed European cooperation. The second part will analyse the institutional developments, starting after the Second World War and will be divided into a section pre-1990 and a post-1990 section, analysing the institutional developments along the way.
Chapter 2: Historical Build-up & Institutional Architecture
When we look closer to the development of defence with a long timeframe, it is not as new as some scholars think although its institutional acceleration in the 1990s surely makes it look new. The pre-1990 period of European defence cooperation and institutional development was mostly done within the NATOframework and can roughly be divided into three periods, each characterised by their own governing mentalities. The periods display a slow change in attitudes towards collectivizing defence as it started out in a transatlantic fashion with NATO, mostly focussed on armaments, yet changed to a distinctly European and functional approach due to increased American competition after the 1960s. As European cooperation became inevitable to retain a certain degree of security and defence in the 1990s, participation increased among the European Member States paired by a rapid institutional development that subsequently affected its institutional design.
Internal factors explaining increased cooperation are: the wishes of (large) individual Member States to enlarge their capacities, supranational pressures from the Commission, spill-over effects from other economic areas or constructivists logic of converging mentalities between the Member States. In this line of reasoning, Batora takes Brussels’ supranational institutions as highly influential factors that re-framed policy issues and diffused pan-European norms in this area.64
Taylor interprets the existence of current European defence structures as a long-term process of economic integration that has generated spill-over effects that are ‘Europeanizing’ this domain65
. Another type of scholar, as Murth, Fiott or Hoeffler have taken the increased interest of the European Commission as the leading principle for integration since the
Commission facilitated the creation of multiple institutions and policies that promoted cooperation between the Member States in this field.66
Others take external factors to explain the acceleration of military integration. Jones explains European defence cooperation as an effect of globalisation to balance the hegemonic United States’ power by increasing pan-European cooperation in order
64 J. Batora, ‘The European Defence Agency: a flashpoint of institutional logics’, West European Politics, no. 6, 2009, pp. 1089-1091.
65 T. Taylor, ‘Defence industries in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, no. 1, 1990, p. 73.
66 D. Fiott, ‘The European Commission and the European Defence Agency: a
to rely less on American products and politics.67
Lungu sees the increased industrial capacity of the United States during the 1990s as a factor that created the necessity for revolutionised military affairs in France, that eventually affected Europe.68
The different accounts and factors of why states integrate in defence and security show not only the complexity of understanding but also shows various important variables that pushed integration at different moments in time.
1949-1990 Peace as Principle
As is widely known though often forgot, the European project started out after the Second World War as a peace project, in an effort to render war on the European continent impossible. The earlier mentioned Founding Fathers as Mitrany, Spinelli and Monnet were highly influential in formulating the initial institutional design of the EU. They chose to functionally tie the production of war materials, of which coal and steel were the most important at the time, to a supranational regulating body that resulted in the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The decisions made early in this process constrained other options and a more market-oriented form of cooperation materialised where spill-over effects would cause other areas to be attracted to the European level. This economic approach, however, would bypass political integration for many decades.
Parallel to the talks surrounding the ECSC were negotiations concerning the pooling of national defence mechanisms to achieve the same goal of establishing peace in Europe. These negotiations concerned a plan of French Prime Minister René Pleven about the creation of a European Defence Community (EDC). This plan was largely overshadowed at the time by the early formation and successes of the NATO and the ECSC. 69 Since political traditions and approaches to defence differed
enormously between nations, finding consensus on military integration has been
67 S.G. Jones, ‘The rise of European Security Cooperation’, Cambridge University
Press, New York, 2007, pp. 57-9.
68 S. Lungu, ‘The US military-technological revolution and the Europeanization
of the French defence industrial sector during the 1990s’, The RUSI Journal, no. 1, 2008, pp. 59-60.
69 I. Bache et al, ‘Politics in the European Union’, Oxford University Press,
especially problematic. By adopting economic approaches, political rigidity was circumvented, and focus placed on rebuilding the devastated economies and industries in Europe and to resupply the European states with armaments to fend off possible communist advances in the East of Europe.70
The early emergence of political-military oriented institutions in NATO, were models of inspiration for the later European institutional framework.71
Rearmament of Europe and Transatlantic Cooperation.
The Second World War left Europe ill prepared to confront the challenges posed by the advancing Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union possessed fewer resources than America or Europe, Western political leaders saw the rearmament of Europe essential to Western stability and security.72
To facilitate the stability and security in Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was created in 1949, operated by the North Atlantic Council in liaison with appropriate institutional guidance in the form of a Military Committee and a Military Staff. In an effort
resupply Europe, a first transatlantic armaments organisation, the Military Production and Supply Board (MPSB), was created and was envisioned by its architects as the forum for coordinating Member States defence-industrial activities. The MPSB was designed ‘to ensure that, insofar as feasible, the military production and procurement
program supports defence plans effectively. The board shall also work on the promotion of standardization of parts and end products of military equipment and provide technical advice on the production and development of weapons’.73
However, it quickly became apparent that the MPSB’s central administrative structure was too weak to manage a network of working groups since its directing body met only a few times a year for several days at a time.74
Therefore, the MPSB
70 M. DeVore, ‘Producing European Armaments: policymaking preferences and
processes’, Cooperation and Conflict, no. 4, 2014, p. 445.
71 J. Howorth, ‘Political and Security Committee: a case study in supranational
inter-governmentalism’, Les Cahiers Européens de Sciences Po, no. 1, 2010, p. 5.
72 M. DeVore, ‘International Armaments Collaboration and the Limits of
Reform’, Defence and Peace Economics, no. 4, 2013, p. 425.
73 North Atlantic Council, ‘The Council establishes a Defence Financial and
Economic Committee and a Military Production and Supply Board’, Washington, 18 November 1949.
74 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
was reorganised into a better designed organisation called the Defence Production Board (DPB), which was set up after the MPSB but were fused to achieve the same goals. Their staffs enlarged; its part-time executive committee was replaced by a permanent body and an influential director from industry to supervise the organisation was appointed.75
Despite these efforts and reforms, these institutions proved ineffective, and the DPB disbanded.
In an attempt to revitalise transatlantic cooperation, a Temporary Council Committee (TCC) was set up in 1951 to recommend improvements to NATO’s structure and was chaired by senior European policy makers including Averell Harriman, Jean Monnet and Erwin Plowden.76
One advice from the Committee was to set up several distinct functional organisations dedicated to collaborative procurement, to set equipment standards, and to coordinate logistics and maintenance.
Consequently, the broad aspirational goals of the MPSB decentralised and diffused the institutional architecture of armament cooperation in the years after the TCC.
The improvements were incorporated in the Military Standardisation Agency (MSA), the Defence Production Committee (DPC), and the Standing Armaments Committee (SAC). Together with the NATO Maintenance and Supply Service System (NMSSS), these transatlantic institutions were formed in the late 1950’s but would endure for years; only the SAC was abandoned.77
The TCC’s recommendation to set up several distinct organisations would prove effective in establishing functioning institutional structures, but it also decentralised and diffused the institutional field into specific areas of defence governance such as standardisation, production and supply of military equipment.
When European policy makers were anticipating a possible collapse of the European Defence Community other, alternative forms of political defence cooperation were explored. French officials tried to convince Belgium, Italy,
Luxembourg and the Netherlands to join in an organisation for cooperation in air and land forces, known under the name FINBAIR and FINABEL respectively. Belgium and the Netherlands opposed this idea due to pre-existing NATO organisations such
75 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 441.
76 Ibid.
as the MSA that was already involved in aeronautical cooperation.78
Therefore, where FINBAIR failed, only FINABEL was established as a cooperation between national ground forces in 1953, still exists, and has grown over time to an organisation with participants of 21 European states.79
Due to their rapid and early development, transatlantic institutions came to occupy critical positions for defence cooperation, making pan-European efforts comparatively marginal and superfluous, hindering and delaying European political-military integration.80
Equally important, besides a rapid presence, some institutions as the MSA, NMSSS and DPC proved to be a very effective way of addressing problems, becoming successful models for later institutions.
Cooperation through Competition
Where the USA was a generous and stable partner in the 1950’s, an increase of American government spending in defence was promoted by the
Kennedy-administration as a way of preserving American jobs, causing an increase in defence-industrial trade-surplus, generating a protectionist export-push towards Europe.81
The USA transformed ‘from the patron saint of Europe’s defence industries in the 1950s
to the most active competitor in the 1960’s’.82
European states sought solutions not only to counter American defence-industrial hegemony but also to increase their cooperative defence-industrial capabilities. European states had to be willing to cooperate, relinquishing sovereignty in some fields of security and defence and became more political than ever before.
As American subsidies ended and NATO transformed the DPC into the Armaments Committee (AC), policy-makers sought to reform the somewhat ineffective AC. A solution was found in the Conference of National Armaments
Directors (CNAD), designed to facilitate interactions among politically accountable
78 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 443.
78 Ibid.
79 List of participating states and history of FINABEL:
<http://www.finabel.org/about>, [accessed on 15-11-16]
80 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 443.
81 Ibid, p. 444.
82 P. Taylor, ‘Weapon standardization in NATO: Collaborative security or
national armaments directors. Its charter reads: ‘the cooperative process as a whole
must avoid rigidity… it must be permissive in the sense that those countries wishing to join together to cooperate can do so in as free and flexible a manner as possible’.83
This permissive framing circumvented the rigid institutional system that caused institutions to fail in the past. The CNAD still exists, highlighting that permissive and broadly defined structures were more successful institutional designs, contrasting the highly specified and limited institutional designs.
After it had come apparent that interests between the USA and Europe were diverging too greatly, an exclusively European organisation was created, Eurogroup. Unsuccessful in addressing and stimulating European cooperation, members viewed the non-participation of France as a flaw rather than blaming the organisational shortcoming on its design.84 The non-participation of the French led to the creation of
the Independent European Programme Group (IEPG) in 1972, similar to Eurogroup, but did not receive subsidies and command from NATO and was an acceptable configuration for France to join.
Although the Eurogroup and IEPG achieved concrete results in R&D projects as the Tornado fighter-bomber and to the international co-development and
production of the F-16, they would disintegrate due to high expectations of performance that were not met. On the transatlantic scale, however, NATO was expanding, reforming, renaming and reframing existing organisations. In the case of more successful institutions, the NMSSS and the MSA were renamed and reformed to the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA) and the Military Agency for
Standardization (MAS), the latter would be transformed to the NATO Standardisation
Organisation (NSO).85
The period 1965-1990 exhibited more hardships in defence cooperation than previous decades but also pushed European states to cooperate amongst each other. Increased interaction and understanding also facilitated the creation of the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a separate organisation created at an intergovernmental conference on security and cooperation between European states, Russia, Turkey and the USA in 1975. The OSCE enjoys relatively
83 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 445
84 Ibid, p. 446. 85 Ibid, p. 447.
little attention due to its vague description and functions although some authors claim that this normative focus has helped develop the current European approach to
security and defence.86
Figure 1 displays the development of the different institutions that have been created up to 1990.
Figure 1: Overview of Armament Institutions 1949-2005.87
1990-2016
Framing European Defence
Due to geopolitical shifts in the 1990s such as the fall of the USSR in Russia, the reunification of Germany in Europe, the Gulf war in the Middle-East and
instability in the Balkans with the Yugoslav wars, European security became a fast-evolving field, accelerating the establishment of a common defence.88
Moreover, a realisation of the enormous economic and political potential of the European scale attracted new players that wanted to increase their influence by participating early in this process.
The European Commission envisioned such an increased influence over this domain but was excluded from any defence-related involvement by European law,
86 M.W. Mosser, ‘Embracing ‘’embedded security’’: the OSCE’s understated but
significant role in the European Security Architecture’, European Security, no. 4, 2015, p. 580.
87 M. DeVore, ‘Producing European Armaments: policymaking preferences and
processes’, Cooperation and Conflict, no. 4, 2014, p. 444.
88 K.L. Nielsen, ‘EU Soft Power and the Capabilities-Expectations gap’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, no. 5, 2013, p. 725.
imposed early at the Treaty of Rome of 1957.89
With these new pressures from the Commission, Member States began to cooperate on their own terms to keep the Commission out of defence as much as possible. In addition to other influential factors as decreased exports and governmental procurement, privatisation in addition to EU rules concerning competition and the prohibition of state aid made defence a highly failing area. The Member States and the European Commission both
understood at this time that if the European Union was to succeed and be a global power, it must have a credible defence industry that was capable of competing with America.90
Defence cooperation increased by means of increasing scale and efficiency at the defence-industrial base, guided by permissive institutional arrangements. It was expected that the progressive articulation would facilitate the creation of a European defence industry and market that would spill-over in a common doctrine as well.91
A first step was to link armament cooperation to the broader process of
European integration through the workings of the West European Union and led to the Western European Armament Group (WEAG).92
This development closely relates to the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992 where European states declared in an annexe of the Treaty to aim at the creation of a European armaments agency.93
Nevertheless, the WEAG did not manage to generate enough inertia to achieve the desired R&D cooperation and drove its members to create yet another organisation, the Western European Armaments Organisation (WEAO). The WEAO was considerably more successful in increasing R&D cooperation projects but only accounted for 2,5% of members’ total defence R&D budget.94
Eventually, both institutions were absorbed into the European Defence Agency in 2004.95
89 Article 346 TFEU (ex. Article 296 Treaty on the European Communities) 90 S. Lungu, ‘The US military-technological revolution and the Europeanization
of the French defence industrial sector during the 1990s’, The RUSI Journal, no. 1, 2008, p. 58
91 T. Dyson & T. Konstadinides, ‘European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory’, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2013, p. 62.
92 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 448.
93 European Communities, ‘Declaration on the WEU’, in: Treaty on European
Union, Official Journal of the European Communities, C191, 1992, p. 105.
94 M. DeVore, ‘Organizing International Armaments Cooperation: institutional
design and path dependencies in Europe’, European Security, no. 3, 2012, p. 449.
95 F. Chang-Chang, ‘European Defence Agency: motor of strengthening the EU’s
In the meanwhile, clear signs of intergovernmental struggle were seen by the European Commission as a chance to get involved. Since 1994, the Commission started showing support for the creation of a common defence market by publishing three influential documents over three years: ‘The Challenges facing the European
defence-related industry’, ‘Implementing European Union strategy on defence-related issues’ and ‘A draft action plan for the defence-related industry’.96
Still, European
States feared that defence-market issues would become part of the common market legislation, leading European states with large national defence industries to establish institutions in smaller formations outside the European Union’s framework. The ‘Organisme Cojointe de Cooperation en Matiere d’Armament’ (OCCAR) was founded in 1996 for this reason and consisted of Europe’s four largest arm producers France, Britain, Italy, Germany. OCCAR took a more restrictive approach to
organisational design and would encourage collaborative projects by creating standard procedures for project management, institutionalising legal expertise on international contracting, and implementing a global balance in work -share arrangements. 97
OCCAR has since been involved in many decisions concerning military R&D, the formation of a single defence market and intra-European cooperation in projects such as the Tiger helicopter and the development of the Airbus A400M and still exists today.
Europe’s Defence Industry
The increasing prices of armaments, the rising costs of maintaining and innovating complex technological equipment but also a sharp decrease in government spending and prohibition of state aid attributed to a highly unstable period for the European defence industry.98
However inefficient defence industries traditionally are, they are a political imperative as it closely relates to the monopoly of legitimate force, sovereignty and the guarantee of national security. Moreover, defence industry
generates a small but stable proportion of national GDP, jobs, technology and most
96 T. Guay and R. Callum, ‘The transformation and future prospects of Europe’s
defence industry’, International Affairs, no. 4, 2002, p. 767.
97 C. Hoeffler, ‘European armament co-operation and the renewal of industrial
policy motives’, Journal of European Public Policy, no. 3, 2012, p. 440.
98 K. Hartley, ‘Defence Industrial Policy in a Military Alliance’, Journal of Peace Research, no. 4, 2006, p. 478.
important, guarantees a steady supply of armaments without being dependent on another country.99
Independent industry limits the influence of external factors: if the national government needs to buy elsewhere, prices may be higher and may affect budgetary decisions and affect national political decisions.
Besides the exorbitantly high prices that foreign suppliers may ask, there is a loss in investment or ‘juste retour’, meaning that returns of investments are higher when states invest in national industry instead in foreign markets. This nationalistic principle has always been a negative barrier to European defence integration. To avoid European governments buying solely on the grounds of nationality, OCCAR and EDA were created to facilitate pan-European procurement, increase efficiency of national military expenditure and streamline research projects.
That interwoven relationship of politics and industry experienced tensions at the beginning of the 1990s when the fragmented national defence industries could not cope with the fierce international competition due to declined orders and increasing costs of armaments and research. European nations were unwilling to allocate sufficient resources to their industries as investments in other sectors as education or healthcare provided more jobs and prosperity to the extent that most defence
industries were struggling for investments after the dissolution of the USSR.100
Due to this ‘peace-dividend’, Europe’s defence industry shrank rapidly.101
Member States tried several remedies to counter the shortages by merging national defence companies, looking for pan-European cooperation, increasing defence budgets or saving costs by completely abandoning national defence industries.
The largest Member States often chose the first option, merging and consolidating national defence companies. In the UK, this led to the first major consolidation, creating BAE Systems, a defence giant with an enormous array of capabilities. This national consolidation was the result of failed negotiations between Germany and Britain to merge the aerospace unit of Germany’s Daimler-Chrysler
99 A. Barrinha, ‘Moving towards a European Defence Industry? The political
discourse on a changing reality and its implications for the future of the European Union’, Global Society, no. 4, 2010, pp. 469-70.
100 M. Kluth, ‘Cross Border EU Defence Industry Consolidation between
Globalization and Europeanisation’, Lisbon Joint Sessions, April 2009, p.8.
101 M. Lundmark. ‘Transatlantic Defence Industry Integration: discourse and action in the organizational field of the defence market’, Stockholm School of Economics,
