Read more about the article The European Union as a Strategic Autonomous and Defence Technological Actor: Between Promises and Reality.
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The European Union as a Strategic Autonomous and Defence Technological Actor: Between Promises and Reality.

The nexus between the concepts of European Strategic Autonomy (EU-SA) and the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) concerns the old willingness of the European Union (EU) to thrive as a global defence actor with autonomous decision-making and freedom of action. However, to do so, it is indispensable to achieve stronger technological sovereignty through balanced cooperation between Member States (MSs). The latter lack, inter alia, a common strategic culture, that is delaying the competitiveness and readiness of the European defence industry while leaving behind crucial investments in modern defence technologies. The EU finds itself in a reality where national interests prevail in a fragmented market with abundant duplicates of capabilities and collective budgetary deficiencies. For instance, this paper shall delve into the reasons why the EU is not yet a strategic autonomous and defence technological actor after actively working on this since 2013. This shall be done through an analysis of the two concepts – EU-SA and EDTIB – and an evaluation of the status quo. The final goal of this project is to prove that the prevalence of national interests over collective technological sovereignty is clogging the implementation of a tangible military-industrial base, without which the EU cannot become a strategic autonomous player in the defence industry.

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19 October 2022
Read more about the article Different Path to Cooperation through Association: Legal Implications within the Common Defence and Security Policy for Potential EU’s Membership Candidates.   
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Different Path to Cooperation through Association: Legal Implications within the Common Defence and Security Policy for Potential EU’s Membership Candidates.   

On the 23rd and 24th of June, EU leaders gathered at the European Council to discuss, among others, newly formulated membership requests from Ukraine, Moldavia and Georgia. While still considered as third countries, states that fill up a membership request or obtain candidate status (as well as non-candidate third States) cannot - and should - not be entirely ousted or dismissed of hand from various EU legal frameworks and tools related to common security and defence policy (CSDP).

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15 July 2022
Read more about the article Is AI the Future of the Military?
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Is AI the Future of the Military?

Over the last seventy years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made incredible progress in leaps and bounds. First introduced by John McCarthy during the 1950s, he described AI as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computers and programmes studied (McCarthy, 2007). More specifically, he invented the LISP programming language in 1958 using the lambda calculus, which was a major milestone in the development of advanced artificial intelligence applications (Allganize, 2020). Thereafter, AI has expanded its ties in several fields, including the civilian and military sectors. On the one hand, big companies such as Amazon and Google have used these tools to build vast commercial empires based in part on predicting the wants and needs of the people who use them (Gatopoulos, Aljazeera, 2021). On the other hand, the development of AI in the military originated a few decades before and has been more intense and challenging.

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10 November 2021
Read more about the article The EU at the Doorstep of the EU-NATO Joint Declaration : Time to Say Adieu to Berlin Plus
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The EU at the Doorstep of the EU-NATO Joint Declaration : Time to Say Adieu to Berlin Plus

Three years have passed since the EU-NATO Joint Declaration of Brussels in 2018. This troubled period that has seen the stepping down of key institutional leaders in both the EU and US left the West with an underlying feeling of imminent change in the operational relationship between the EU and the Alliance. This feeling can be summarised by European Commission President von Der Leyen in her State of the Union speech in September 2021:

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4 November 2021
Read more about the article The Contribution of the EU Member States to the CSDP Framework
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The Contribution of the EU Member States to the CSDP Framework

The current legal framework of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) was set in stone in 2009 by the Treaty on European Union (TEU). The CSDP is described in detail by the Articles 41 to 46 of the TEU. Article 41, paragraph 2 of the TEU, prohibits expenditure arising from military operations from being charged to the EU budget. Therefore, a large percentage of the military operations costs should be covered by the EU Member States (MS). According to Article 42 of the TEU, the Council of the European Union (EU) and the European Council unanimously decide on matters related to the CSDP.

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26 August 2021