Paper Titles & Abstracts

The Common Security and Defence Policy aimed at equipping the EU with civil-military capabilities. However the current financial crisis is challenging the EU's role and improved cooperation in capability development may provide a powerful way to deal with the situation. This paper will assess the extent of European inter-institutional cooperation in military capability development at a time of economic pressure with important implications for Europe's ability to provide for its own and international security. Capability development has become more prominent within the EU. Projects have been set up by the European Commission, the European Defence Agency and the European External Action Service (EEAS). These include the defence policy taskforce, pooling and sharing and the EEAS' capability development process. The question remains as to the extent of cooperation and coordination among these actors and whether these initiatives are acting as forums for Member State socialisation, policy learning and norm creation. Approaching this analysis from a Sociological institutionalist perspective this paper aims at mapping out where coordination is occurring and which institutions are considered to be most influential. Thus it will assess whether the different initiatives add up to a coherent body of policies to improve European capability development or rather whether these are contradictory with stasis being the result.