How useful is the concept of strategic culture for understanding when, where and how the European Union uses force? This paper will assess the extent to which agreement among the European Union Member States to conduct Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) operations is founded on a top-down...

The special position of the rotating Council Presidency has raised a long-standing debate on the extent to which this function allows a Member State to exert additional influence on European Union decision-making, in particular in external policy. This article argues that a broader and more...

This article reviews the literature on Europeanization beyond the group of EU member, "quasi-member" and applicant states. It uses the analysis of Europeanization in applicant states as a theoretical starting point to ask if, how and under which conditions we can expect domestic effects of...

Who speaks for Europe is a major question in European integration, yet few systematic attempts have been made to study when the Presidency or the High Representative represents the European Union. This article uses two most-similar cases of conflict resolution with significant EU involvement to...

Since its early beginnings, the member states of the European Communities have tried to establish a common foreign policy and at the same time were reluctant to implement it. Only the Maastricht Treaty introduced an institutional framework. However, the emerging Common Foreign and Security...

Security governance has changed the way societies organise and control the execution of powers. This contribution will focus on the ’German’ approach, and, inevitably these days, also on the EU approach towards new threats to security, especially with regard to terrorism. The main argument...

The establishment of ESDP/CSDP in 1999 has been accompanied by the anticipation that the European Union will represent a unique strategic actor because of its ability to mix civilian and military crisis management instruments as part of a comprehensive approach. But to what extent is this...

The Council Secretariat General has emerged as one of the institutional winners of the dynamic development of the EU’s foreign and security policy, especially in the field of crisis management. Despite this, the role of the Council Secretariat in European foreign policy remains under...

This paper analyses and evaluates the CSDP mission planning process, i.e. the procedural model for planning, launching and reviewing CSDP operations. It shows that the EU has developed an intricate planning mechanism by generously drawing upon existing NATO planning doctrine while adding a...

Since the Conclusions of the European Council on the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) at Tampere in 1999 the Union has recognised the significance of the external dimension to this policy field, and over the last decade the Union’s activity in this field has both intensified and...