This Workshop explores the emergence of a European defence ecosystem amid major geopolitical shifts, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and changing transatlantic relations. It brings together empirical and theoretical work on the roles of EU institutions, member states, NATO, third countries, and defence industries. The Workshop interrogates evolving and often paradoxical patterns of cooperation, policy change, and contestation. By engaging multiple theoretical frameworks, it assesses the scope and nature of defence integration in this sensitive domain, advancing both scholarly and policy debates on the EU’s identity, capacity, and role as a security and defence actor.
Until recently, scholarship on EU defence focused primarily on institutional developments within the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and the EU’s evolving relationship with NATO (Howorth, 2014; Smith, 2017). These studies highlighted the intergovernmental nature of cooperation and tensions between Atlanticism and European strategic autonomy.
Since 2014, however, initiatives such as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), and the European Defence Fund (EDF) have shifted the focus. The EDF, in particular, has increased the European Commission's involvement in defence, challenging assumptions about the exclusion of supranational actors in high politics (Fiott, 2020; Riddervold & Newsome, 2018). This shift has sparked debate over whether such developments represent functional spillover (Niemann & Ioannou, 2015), strategic intergovernmentalism (Moravcsik, 1998), or institutional entrepreneurship and governance by stealth (Cram, 2010; Rhinard, 2019).
A paradox now shapes EU defence: integration is both accelerating and constrained. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has intensified cooperation, yet defence remains firmly state-driven, with uneven participation and growing collaboration with third countries like the UK, Norway, and the U.S. (Schimmelfennig, 2018). At the domestic level, rising public support (Eurobarometer, 2022) and populist resistance reflect new political dynamics (Hooghe & Marks, 2009).
This Workshop provides a timely opportunity to examine the interplay of national and integrative forces in European defence, reassess theoretical approaches, and explore the contours of an emerging European defence ecosystem.
1: How has Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine transformed the EU’s approach to defence and security cooperation?
2: What roles do EU institutions and other actors play in shaping the emerging European defence ecosystem?
3: How can we understand recent developments in EU defence through the lens of integration theory?
4: What are the political and societal drivers or constraints of defence integration?
5: Does the construction of a European defence ecosystem signal a redefinition of the EU’s international identity?
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| Competing political loyalties? The European Commission and the defence industry lobby |
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| From Denial to Punishment: Emerging Nuclear Readiness among NATO’s Eastern Allies |
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| Partisanship Under Geopolitical Threat: A Comparative Analysis of Parties’ Defence Preferences in Europe After The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine |
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| Conceptualising the European Defence Ecosystem: between integration and autonomy |
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| Not so Intergovernmental After All? PESCO and Institutional Dynamics of emerging European Defence Cooperation |
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| From Diverging Values to Uncertain Transatlantic Relations: Conceptualising Relational Uncertainty in EU–US Security Relations |
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| Governing Through Crisis: Crisisification of Common Security and Defence Policy After the Ukraine War |
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| The Commission’s Wallet: How the European Defence Fund is Shaping Autonomy after Ukraine |
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| Resilience as Defence: Hybrid Threat Policy Alignment Across the EU |
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| Joint Acquisition as a Catalyst in EU Defence Policy: From Intergovernmental Hesitation to Supranational Momentum |
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| The Trump Inflection: the US National Security Strategy as an exercise in performative defence |
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| Bridging the Divide: Legal, Strategic, and Organizational Initiatives in EU Cyber Defence and Their Integration with Civilian Security Policies |
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| Weaponized Scarcity: Sanctions, Shocks, and Migration and the Reconfiguring Europe’s Defence Systems |
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| Foreign and Defense Policy Views of the Dutch Far-right Parties ahead of 2025 Dutch General Elections |
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| Advisors or Advocates? The European Defence Industry as a Political Actor in EU Policymaking |
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| Separating narratives: an analysis of the EU enlargement and defense policy in relation to Ukraine since 2022 |
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| The Expansion of Europe–Japan Security Cooperation: Converging Threats and Diversifying Partnerships |
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| Arming Europe - Reconceptualizing European Defence Production |
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| Energy Security and the Transformation of EU Foreign and Defence Architecture in a Geopolitical Era |
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| The European Defence Ecosystem and its Impact on EU Candidate States: The Case of Serbia |
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