28 April 2026
Pioneers Wanted
With full-scale war on the European continent and doubts about US support, the EU still treats this existential security crisis like a regular bureaucratic undertaking. It is against this backdrop that Commissioner Kubilius is expected to engineer a genuine European Defence Union – and in our view, raising the right legal questions amounts to answering them: differentiated integration, pursued by a core group of willing member states, is the way forward. Continue reading >>
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06 March 2025
A European Army and Three Difficult Choices
J.D. Vance shocked Europe with his speech, signalling a diminishing sense of shared values between the U.S. and Europe. The last Friday’s press conference in Washington further confirmed that America’s commitment as the leader of the free world has disappeared. Consequently, for a "European army", the MSs will have to make three difficult decisions beyond the questions of legal feasibility under the Treaties. A complementary force involving willing MSs under intergovernmental decision-making appears the most realistic path for common territorial defence, while concerns regarding democratic decision-making remain. Continue reading >>23 April 2024
A Proposal Towards a European Defence Union
In the context of profound (geo-)political changes, and following the Conference on the Future of Europe, the European Parliament (EP) adopted proposals for a Treaty reform for the area of defence. This blog post analyses the proposed formation of the European Defence Union (EDU) and the introduction of qualified majority voting (QMV) while concluding that the new framework would likely create contradictory outcomes and undesirably challenge the current constitutional balance. Continue reading >>
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