European View

This article outlines some of the major EU security and defence policy initiatives and the role of the European Commission within these. The article focuses especially on those initiatives outlined in the draft document for the EU Strategic Compass that have a bearing both on the Commission’s role and on other defence-related initiatives in 2022. The article also discusses the role of technological development and geo-economics in this new era of great-power competition. It concludes by discussing some of the implications of these developments for the political role of the European Commission and for the democratic and political accountability of the Union.

This article provides a brief overview of European and transatlantic defence cooperation in the area of artificial intelligence. As states race forward to achieve superiority in artificial intelligence, including its military applications, NATO allies and partner nations on both sides of the Atlantic have a strong incentive to cooperate closely and ensure the collective West can maintain its technological edge. However, large gaps remain between the US and the EU on certain key indicators. To ensure greater European performance and relevance, it is desirable to focus on two strategic priorities: investment volumes, both public and private, which need to be significantly increased; and the full use of collaborative mechanisms involving the US.

The article discusses Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union and the principle of mutual defence in general in the EU. Most EU member states base their defence policy around NATO, and thus, there has historically been little appetite to create new overlapping structures for mutual defence. However, during recent years, interest in the further operationalisation and clarification of Article 42(7) has arisen, with the European Parliament and member states such as Finland and France at the forefront of these demands. While the EU’s mutual defence is not going to replace or overtake NATO as the cornerstone of Europe’s security order, further developing the Common Security and Defence Policy and the EU’s mutual defence policy would be beneficial for Europe as a whole.

The crisis in Ukraine has highlighted the weaknesses of the EU as an international actor. Although the EU is an economic, commercial and regulatory giant, it has not succeeded in emerging as a significant military or security actor—despite having announced a ‘common foreign and security policy’ 30 years ago. In particular, it is deeply divided over policy towards Russia. Moreover, attempts to devise an overall policy for its neighbourhood, and in particular an ‘Eastern Partnership’ focused on the borderline states between the Union and Russia, have been widely judged as failures. In the showdown between Russia and the West over Ukraine, the EU per se has been marginalised by both Moscow and Washington. Various EU member states have embraced different preferences with respect to the potential resolution of the Ukraine crisis. In the context of potential discussions, demanded by Vladimir Putin, on a ‘new security order’ for Eurasia, the EU’s absence is tragic.

Located on the eastern flank of the EU, the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have a specific perception of risks and threats and hence unique views on how to guarantee their security. This is particularly relevant with regard to their attitudes towards Russia. As members of both the EU and NATO, the CEE countries are in favour of stronger EU–NATO cooperation in security and the non-duplication of these organisations’ efforts. Some of the countries see NATO as the key guarantor of their security. For several reasons, CEE countries have serious deficits in their defence capabilities and rely heavily on collective ones.

This article uses a geopolitical lens to assess the EU’s response to COVID-19 by exploring the Commission’s creation of an emergency medical stockpile, dubbed rescEU. The article describes the creation, financing and distribution of this stockpile, which comes under the aegis of the Civil Protection Mechanism, in its first year of operation, 2020–1. What the analysis shows is how the creation and distribution of medical assistance was justified by the need to adapt to a changing international environment, one in which Russia and China contested the EU’s solidarity, both within the EU27 and towards its neighbours. The EU has committed to investing large sums to develop pandemic resilience via stockpiling. However, what remains to be seen is how far such a policy can strengthen solidarity and counteract anti-EU narratives in the global context of the increasing strategic competition facing the EU.

Many commentators have blamed Gazprom, Europe’s largest gas supplier, for contributing to the 2021–2 European natural gas price crisis through market manipulation and withholding the necessary gas supply volumes from the European market. Is there any substance to such claims? Is Gazprom really involved in manipulating the European gas market and prompting the record-breaking surge in European natural gas prices? The current article analyses the official figures on Gazprom’s production capabilities, and supply and demand, and offers some insights as to why exactly claims of market manipulation by Gazprom should be taken seriously. It argues that Gazprom did indeed have the ability to ease the pressure on the European gas market in 2021, but did not use it as one would expect of a company acting in good faith. Figures shown in the article lay out a detailed case that the EU authorities should open an investigation into Gazprom’s market manipulation.

This article looks at the EU’s intervention as the mediator in a domestic political stand-off in Georgia, triggered by the parliamentary elections of 2020. Believing the results of the elections to be fraudulent, the parliamentary opposition rejected them. European Council President Charles Michel then stepped in, initiating a mediation process between the government and the opposition in 2021 and securing a political agreement intended to end the crisis. Analysing the relevant geopolitical and policy framework for this intervention, and its successes and failures, presents fertile ground for understanding the EU as the foreign-policy actor in its neighbourhood and the implications of such a role for the Eastern Partnership initiative. This article argues that while the EU’s active leverage model for supporting democracy was applied in the case of Georgia, the shortcomings and miscalculations of the premises on which the policy model was built limited its success.

Democracy is retreating worldwide. As Freedom House reports, the US has not escaped this trend. The system of checks and balances of American democracy managed to thwart Trump’s assault on democracy. But together with longstanding institutional and structural defects, his presidency clearly indicates that American democracy is on the verge of political decay. Political polarisation, inequalities, identity politics and the inability of the two political parties to reach compromises are further testing the American democratic institutions. To avert decay, the US needs a reform coalition to bring about institutional changes; and more importantly, to establish inclusive economic policies and a renewed focus on citizenship, duty and a shared purpose.

The deterioration of security and humanitarian conditions in the Sahel region has widely acknowledged implications for the EU, and the strategic importance of tackling them has been established in EU strategies. Local land degradation sits at a nexus of the many challenges as it is a driver of poverty, famine, conflict, migration, poor governance, loss of biodiversity and climate change. A local framing of the issues makes it possible to identify the actions that can address them. The vast number of people engaged in land-based livelihoods offers the potential to halt and even reverse degradation. The main limiting factor for this is the lack of targeted financing. The EU can be a leader in this process through (1) integrating ecosystem health into existing programming; (2) designing new projects targeting sustainable land use; (3) supporting the development of monitoring systems that enable funding, including from carbon markets; and (4) lowering administrative barriers to partnerships.