Can the EU’s Strategic Compass steer European defence? by Luigi Scazzieri
The EU’s planned ‘Strategic Compass’ will define its security and defence ambitions. Though not a panacea, it could give European defence more coherence and should help foster a common strategic outlook among member-states. Europe’s security is threatened by conflict in its neighbourhood and big power competition on the global stage. In June 2020 EU defence ministers agreed to develop a ‘Strategic Compass’, a new strategy defining EU aims in security and defence policy. The Compass, which is supposed to be adopted by European leaders during the French Presidency in the first half of 2022, will build on a comprehensive threat analysis that the European External Action Service (EEAS) will complete by the end of this year. The Compass will not replace the EU’s 2016 Global Strategy, which set out the overall priorities of the Union’s foreign policy. Instead, it is supposed to be a ‘mid-range’ strategy, translating the EU’s priorities into tangible goals and defining what capabilities the Union should develop. The Compass also aims to foster a common European ‘strategic culture’, pushing member-states towards a common understanding of the key threats to Europe and how to counter them together. The Strategic Compass is designed to maintain momentum and inject coherence into European defence. In recent years, the EU has launched several initiatives to strengthen its Common Security and Defence Policy. The Union now
has a €7 billion European Defence Fund (EDF) to finance defence research and procurement. The European Commission has a Directorate for Defence Industry and Space, to provide leadership for defence industrial co-operation, build a more open defence market and support ‘military mobility’. Twenty-five member-states have launched Permanent Structured Co-operation (PESCO), a framework to facilitate joint procurement projects and improve readiness. Finally, the EU has a €5 billion ‘European Peace Facility’ to train and equip foreign security forces, and is spending €1.5 billion on improving military mobility, including by upgrading infrastructure. Despite these substantial efforts, member-states still lack a common vision of what the EU should do in security and defence. In November 2016, they agreed on three priorities: preventing and managing crises in the neighbourhood; building up partners’ capabilities; and protecting the EU and European citizens. But member-states remain divided about what each entails. Their different strategic outlooks (and their lack of capabilities) make it harder for the EU to manage crises in its neighbourhood. Another large disagreement is over whether the EU should