The EU’s fragmented defence governance: different rationales, different logics and different actors

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union’s (EU) role in defence is receiving growing political and scholarly attention. The EU has responded to the war with a plethora of new defence initiatives. Nonetheless, the Union’s potential to advance European defence cooperation remains contested. Traditionally, the EU’s defence dimension has been seen as the domain of member state governments and their competing national interests. However, more recently, scholars have also emphasised the emergence of the European Commission as a supranational policy entrepreneur, evident in the genesis of initiatives such as the European Defence Fund (EDF). In this paper, we go beyond the classic intergovernmental-supranational divide and apply governance concepts from international relations and EU integration studies to EU policymaking in defence matters. Instead of a unitary European defence agenda or model, we argue that the EU’s defence dimension consists of several distinct albeit partly overlapping governance modes with somewhat different trajectories, rationales, logics and actors. It is these different modes of defence governance – and the interplay between them – that shape the EU’s approach to defence policy and condition its possibilities to strengthen European defence.