SUBJECTS

• After Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union decided to move forward towards integration in an area that had been sidelined for decades: common defence and security.
• The EU Member States, currently 27, had never before reached such a broad consensus: Europe must consolidate its strategic autonomy in the coming years, which implies boosting its own defence industry.

Background

• After the end of World War II, and with the onset of the Cold War, the defence of the continent was established in two alliances driven by the two major victorious powers.
  • In the Western bloc, led by the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949, which gave rise to the Atlantic Alliance or NATO.
  • As a reaction to NATO, and after the entry of West Germany into the Alliance, the Soviet Union promoted the Warsaw Pact in 1955, to which the “satellite” states of the communist bloc had to adhere (except Yugoslavia, which adopted its own profile).
• Between 1945 and 1989, Europe was divided into two blocs that never entered into direct conflict. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to the disintegration of the communist bloc, and also meant the end of the Warsaw Pact in 1991.
• In the following years, most Eastern European states joined NATO. After 2022, even two historically neutral states like Finland and Sweden decided to join the Alliance.

The European Defence Community (1952)

• The first European integration project in the military field was in 1952, after the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) a year earlier.
• The EDC was mainly driven by the French Prime Minister with the support of the United States, who viewed favourably the creation of European armed forces to contain the expansionism of the Soviet Union. At that time, the countries involved would have been the six ECSC members (West Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Luxembourg).
• However, the possibility of West Germany rearming and the transfer of military sovereignty to a superior body worried the more sovereigntist political parties in France. In 1954, the French National Assembly rejected the Constitutive Treaty of the EDC, thus the project failed.
• It was not until the approval of the Maastricht Treaty (1992) that European defence became one of the objectives of community integration. However, the projects proposed up to 2022 were mostly of voluntary adhesion by the States and did not have the impact nor the binding commitments adopted during these last three years.