EU's Strategic Compass for Security and Defence: Articles and reports

This EU Hybrid Toolbox (EUHT) intends to gather all civilian and military instruments that can be employed to counter hybrid campaigns. Operationalisation was intended by the end of 2022 but this no longer seems attainable. However, the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated the importance of having a coordinated reaction capability to counter hybrid campaigns and is likely to provide the momentum to bring the development of the EUHT to fruition. This policy brief examines the most recent progress on operationalising the EUHT. First, the rationale for the EUHT is explained. Next, the state of play in the operationalization process is analysed. The subsequent section focusses on the difficulties stemming from differences of opinion between the member states, followed by an assessment of the issues surrounding decision-making.

De manière inaperçue, le Conseil de l'UE a adopté en mars 2022 une « boussole stratégique »dont le texte a dû être adapté in extremis pour tenir compte du conflit de haute intensité déclenché le 24 février par la Russie en Ukraine. Alors que l’OTAN a adopté en juin 2022 son nouveau « concept stratégique » et apparait revitalisée par l'agression de la Russie, l’Union peut-elle développer de manière autonome sa politique de sécurité et de défense commune comme le souhaite le Président Macron ? Un préalable : que les États membres se mettent d’accord sur des intérêts communs à défendre ainsi que la boussole les y invite.

Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine launched on 24 February 2022 upended Europe’s security order. The invasion was a wake-up call that peace in the continent should not be taken for granted and a catalyst for change at European and transatlantic level. The EU adopted a long-term Strategic Compass for security and defense. NATO, no longer “braindead,” issued a new Strategic Concept for the coming decade and is expanding. While there is convergence in strategic outlooks, questions remain on how both organizations will cooperate and coordinate their actions, implement the investment, troops and capabilities’ goals set in each document as well as deal with countries such as China.

One month into the Russian war against Ukraine, the EU approved the Strategic Compass. The strategy document promises a quantum leap in the EU’s security and defence policy. But how realistic is this? The war sharpened the focus of the Compass, it triggered a substantial increase in defence spending, and it enhanced the sense of urgency regarding implementation. It is less clear whether it will entail a greater capacity to act, more strategic autonomy and better spending. The member states will have to move on these issues if there is to be a real quantum leap.

One month on from the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and following stalling discussions over the last two years, the Member States of the European Union stepped up the latest negotiations. This enabled the EU Council to adopt, as a matter of urgency, the “Strategic Compass for Security and Defence” on 21 March. This is a 47-page text with a sub-heading that sums up its ambition –“For a European Union that protects its citizens, values and interests and contributes to international peace and security”.

This article outlines some of the major EU security and defence policy initiatives and the role of the European Commission within these. The article focuses especially on those initiatives outlined in the draft document for the EU Strategic Compass that have a bearing both on the Commission’s role and on other defence-related initiatives in 2022. The article also discusses the role of technological development and geo-economics in this new era of great-power competition. It concludes by discussing some of the implications of these developments for the political role of the European Commission and for the democratic and political accountability of the Union.

Taking their fate into their own hands, EU heads of state and government endorsed the Strategic Compass on 24 March 2022, a roadmap for becoming a stronger security and defence actor. The shared threat assessment, a first in the history of the EU, is a positive development. Rewritten over the last month to emphasise the impact of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the Strategic Compass reveals a newfound consensus among EU Member States on the danger Russia poses, but also a lack of strategic foresight. This raises the question of whether the final document might contain shortcomings regarding the threat posed by China and the importance of the Indo-Pacific.

At the beginning of 2022, France took over the rotating presidency of the European Union. With the motto ‘Recovery, power, belonging’, the country has put forward its vision of the next year EU agenda with a strong emphasis on EU sovereignty. “A move from a Europe of cooperation within our borders to a powerful Europe in the world,” is according to the French president Emmanuel Macron necessary to face the complexity of security threats, migration and hybrid warfare included. These statements and objectives do not come as a surprise; France has traditionally been a vocal supporter of more autonomous EU, especially in the area of security and defense, and has pushed for a greater military involvement of the EU around the world.

In March 2022, the 27 member states of the European Union (EU) want to adopt a “Strategic Compass” (SC) that is intended to make the Union a provider of inter­national security by 2030 and strengthen its strategic sovereignty. The first draft of this document has been available since mid-November, and it shows serious deficits: strategic fragmentation, over-institutionalization, and diffusion of responsibility remain hallmarks of EU security and defense policy. In the upcoming revision of the compass, Berlin is called upon in particular to clarify its status and set a clear target of ambition. Otherwise, the Strategic Compass is likely to encourage an EU security policy whose motto is “Everything can be done, nothing must be done.”

One dimension of strategic autonomy has been firmly decided upon since the EU created its Common Security and Defence Policy in 1999: the projection of military force outside the borders of the EU. That is also the dimension that must, and can, be acted upon in the very short term.

The retreat of European troops together with the American forces during the Afghanistan evacuation, alongside the French missiles crisis and more recently the conflict in Belarus, have once again called the European Union’s defence capabilities in question. As the debate on the Union’s defence strategy is becoming more and more salient, VP/HR Josep Borrell has made the strong assessment that "Europe is in danger", at risk of a "strategic shrinkage".

The Strategic Compass for Security and Defence should concretise the EU’s level of ambition as a security provider. In November 2021, a first draft was presented to the member states. It is now up to them to negotiate the final document until March 2022. The need for consensus and long-standing divides could tempt them to either dilute the draft or postpone the more controversial decisions to the implementation phase. With this paper, we seek to counteract these temptations. We identify eight key deliverables, point towards possible implementation challenges and propose ways to address them.

"Europe’s “Strategic Compass” proposes a number of initiatives to enable the EU to act in the security and defence domain and confront the many challenges impacting European interests. The document, prepared by the European External Action Service (EEAS) under the responsibility of Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative and Vice President of the Commission, will be debated by defence and foreign ministers over the next few months and subsequently adopted as an official strategy statement sometime during the French Presidency of the European Council next year."

The European Council, the President of the European Commission and the High Representative for the Union's External Relations and Security Policy have been in favour of promoting a more geopolitical Union with a more assertive policy in its international relations. That issue has relaunched the question of whether the EU needs to review its strategy for external action, June 2016. But rather than reviewing this strategy, the Union has decided to draw up what has been called 'the Strategic Compass', an analysis that, based on the threats faced by the Union, will help to make the European strategic document more operational. In this analysis we intend to clarify what this Strategic Compass could consists of.

Panta rhei – everything flows (Heraclitus). Once again, geopolitics is in transition, and a new crossroads is being approached. While we already knew that global leadership is beyond any single country, now it appears to be beyond even any single continent – beyond an alliance of two continents even. This means that the old strategic truth, that the power that has Europe on its side has the potential to dominate the world, no longer holds. Europe no longer is the kingmaker. And that changes a lot, for the EU, the US, and the world.

The EU has embarked on a strategic reflection process which should result in a document called the Strategic Compass. It aims to update elements of the EU Global Strategy from 2016, while retaining a more focused and operational tilt. The Compass should clarify the EU’s assessment of the security environment, define the level of ambition in security and defence matters, and offer concrete tools and proposals to achieve that level of ambition.

"When we speak about “strategic autonomy”, what do we actually mean? Is this about the capacity of European countries to manage crises in their immediate neighbourhood in the way France and the UK envisaged it in 1998 in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars, i.e., a form of autonomy that is not only acceptable but very much supported by Washington? Is this the somewhat elusive extended form of autonomy pictured in the 2016 EU Global Strategy, i.e., a form of autonomy bordering on military independence, a prospect which so much terrified Eastern Europe as well as a few others? Is this the elusive “comprehensive autonomy”, a concept which succeeded that of extended autonomy and means nothing else than autonomy writ large, or in one word: independence?..."

The Strategic Compass for the EU’s security and defence policy, to be adopted in 2022, must generate immediate action. The best way of ensuring that is to prepare new capability initiatives and, potentially, new operational engagements now, so that they can be launched simultaneously with the Strategic Compass. In that light, “the development of an initial-entry force as a pool of Member State forces that train and exercise together and are made available to the EU” (as summarised in an EEAS working paper), is one of the most promising ideas on the table. How to make it work?

Dr Monika Sus (Polish Academy of Sciences) argues if the EU Strategic Compass is to rectify some of the 2016 EU Global Strategy’s deficiencies, the Strategic Compass must meet three requirements: inclusivity, integration, and implementation.

On 16 June 2020, the EU Defence Ministers embarked to develop a strategic compass for security and defence. On 6 May 2021, the EU Council Ministers held another meeting, part of a series since 2020, negotiating the format of the legal-political agreement expected to be issued at the end of 2022. The Strategic Compass is seen as one of the most ambitious plans to unify the EU response in Security and Defence. The present analysis aims to briefly describe its novelty, lay down the spirit surrounding such initiative, and identify the challenges ahead. By the end, a few recommendations for boosting the EU action in defence will be provided, such as dormant provisions of the EU Treaties that have not or to a little extent been used but can prove to be imperative.

The European Union (EU) is developing a Strategic Compass for security and defence, to be ready by March 2022. The first semester of 2021 is the phase of the ‘strategic dialogue’ with the member states and institutions of the EU, including the involvement of think tanks and other stakeholders. Commissioned by the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the Clingendael Institute delivers its contribution to the strategic dialogue on the Strategic Compass by focussing on defining more precisely the military level of ambition of the EU and what it implies for capability development and the relationship with NATO.

"Much ink has been spilled calling upon Europeans to do more for their defence in the context of the transatlantic relationship. “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it”: it used to be a fitting expression for this conundrum – no more. The Strategic Compass process is an opportunity not only to decide what umbrellas to buy but when, how, and where to use them to protect against rain, hail, snow and even sunburn."

The EU Strategic Compass will set out what the EU should be able to do and achieve in the area of crisis management and resilience in the next 5-10 years, and which capacities and partnerships (including EU-NATO) it will need in that regard. There are questions about the EU’s military level of ambition, especially in terms of what type of missions and operations the Union should be able to carry out.

On 26 April 2021, the EU Institute for Security Studies and the Croatian Ministry of Defence organised a conference on how best to embed EU defence initiatives into national defence planning processes. The conference attracted approximately 90 high-level participants and it took place in the context of the EU Strategic Compass dialogue phase.The event identified practical steps to better raise awareness of EU initiatives at the national level and to encourage greater ownership by member states.

This paper deals with the European Union ("EU") Strategic Compass process. It is designed to refine the EU Global Strategy of June 2016 and the Implementation Plan of late 2016, as well as to guide the Common Security and Defence Policy and the strategic
cultures of the 27 Member States (MS). A final document will emerge from the process, which will be presented to the European Council in 2022 by the High Representative for Foreign Policy and Vice-President of the Commission, Josep Borrel.

For the past twenty years, the EU has deployed numerous missions and operations to different parts of the world and it has agreed on a suite of new initiatives to boost capability development, synchronise defence investment plans and enhance operational capacity. However, there is still a fundamental question facing the EU and its Member States: where is the security and defence policy heading in light of rising geopolitical challenges? Is there a common threat perception among member states? The Strategic Compass offers a way forward on crisis management, resilience, capabilities and partnerships, but it will mean little without sustained political engagement by EU member states.

The European Union’s range of new EU security and defence initiatives are ground-breaking, but they can only deliver on their potential if member states shift the paradigm towards truly thinking, acting and working together as Europeans, based on a strategic consensus regarding the future of European defence in the changing global context. The new Strategic Compass, to be adopted by the Council in early 2022, provides a framework to develop such a shared vision. It should help to operationalise the EU’s strategic autonomy in concrete terms, in mutual reinforcement and coherence with NATO, while seizing the opportunity to strike a new transatlantic bargain with the Biden Administration.

Josep Borrell, Haut Représentant de l'Union européenne pour les Affaires étrangères et la Politique de sécurité, et Vice-Président de la Commission européenne, analyse les besoins d'autonomie stratégique de l'Europe.
"Le débat sur l’« autonomie stratégique européenne » a suscité bon nombre de controverses. Saluons ce débat. Il importe de clarifier cette question, de lever toute ambiguïté la concernant et de faire des propositions concrètes sur la manière d’aller de l’avant dans ce domaine. D’aucuns voient dans l’autonomie stratégique une chimère dont il faudrait cesser de se repaître, surtout depuis la victoire de Joe Biden. D’autres y voient un impératif politique plus que jamais nécessaire. Et entre les deux, il y a ceux qui estiment qu’il faut éviter de retomber dans les vieilles querelles théologiques, et donner à ces mots un contenu concret. Je me range volontiers parmi ces derniers."

The EU has embarked on a process to develop a ‘Strategic Compass’ for its security and defence policy. This two-year process began in June 2020 and will conclude under the French EU Council Presidency in spring 2022. A German initiative, it is meant to narrow the gap between ambition and reality when it comes to the Union’s external action; facilitate the development of a shared strategic culture; and clarify the overall image of EU defence cooperation that Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the European Defence Fund (EDF), the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) and other post-2016 initiatives have created. Broadly speaking, the Strategic Compass seeks to boost the EU’s ability to navigate through international challenges.

The “Strategic Compass” is one of the most discussed initiatives related to EU security and defense during Germany’s
ongoing Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2020 and will continue to be in 2021. It serves three purposes: First, to formulate the first common threat analysis of the EU. Second, to agree on clear and achievable strategic objectives for the EU to strengthen the EU as an actor in security and defense. And third, to offer political guidance for future military planning processes. This report outlines challenges, ideas, and recommendations for the Strategic Compass and its four baskets – crisis management, resilience, capability development, and partnerships.

The EU decided to develop a “strategic compass” for its security and defence policy until 2022. Building on a common threat analysis, it should concretise the EU’s level of ambition as a security provider. The strategic compass represents a real and timely opportunity, but there is also a risk of engaging in a lengthy and winding process that would simply produce another paper. This Policy Paper presents risks and opportunities and develops recommendations for both stages of the process.