EU Security and Defence Policy: What It is, How It Works, Why It Matters

Security and defence is one of the areas in which the EU has advanced most in recent years. Europe has come a long way since the disappointments and frustration in the 1990s, when, in light of the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, analysts argued that the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the EU was ‘neither common, nor foreign, nor dealing with security, nor [could] be called a policy.’ Since then the newly developed Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has become the necessary framework for the formulation and implementation of effective European security policy. This course will examine EU security policy in some detail, both empirically and theoretically. It covers, among other things, its precedents in post-Second World War history, the CFSP/CSDP policy-making system, its Brussels-based actors, the role of the member states in European security policy, the emerging European security culture, military and civilian EU interventions abroad, EU security relations with America and Russia and Europe’s contribution to the fight against global terrorism. Throughout the course, EU security policy will be treated as an instance of,and contextualised by reference to, EU foreign policy.

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