@article{d63b2f5e104e433da84b32cf40a2fc12,
title = "Combined differentiation in European defense: Tailoring Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) to strategic and political complexity",
abstract = "Sustaining meaningful defense cooperation in Europe is made difficult by defense-industrial fragmentation, a multiplicity of institutional frameworks, divergent strategic cultures and domestic opposition to integration. The European Union{\textquoteright}s recent foray into defense integration incorporates multiple forms of differentiation to overcome these barriers, with Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) characterized by selective membership, external participation, and project-based clustering. Such “combined differentiation” offers an instructive example of how EU practices and principles can contribute to meaningful defense collaboration, even though Brussels is often thought a weak actor externally. It also illustrates how distinct forms of differentiation can be embodied within a single structure to accommodate complexity in strategic preferences. Using the example of PESCO, this article shows how “combined differentiation” has emerged as a response to the nature of the European defense landscape and how debates between member states about how to respond to specific challenges have brought about further differentiation over time.",
keywords = "combined differentiation, PESCO, European defense, CSDP, differentiated cooperation",
author = "Benjamin Martill and Carmen Gebhard",
note = "Funding Information: Over the course of 2017 the HR/VP, Federica Mogherini, and the European External Action Service (EEAS) would support member states to reach consensus over the design and governance of PESCO (Blockmans, , p. 1809). PESCO was also accompanied by a host of other initiatives aimed at improving the coordination of defense activities among EU member states. Following the publication in 2017 of the first EUGS implementation report and the Commission{\textquoteright}s own “reflection paper” on defense (European Commission, ), a stream of new initiatives was introduced at EU-level (Martill & Sus, ; Sweeney & Winn, ; Tocci, ). These included, alongside PESCO, the Coordinated Annual Review of Defense (CARD) through which the military capabilities of member states would be subject to a coordinated review process, the European Defense Fund (EDF), through which €1.5bn seed funding from the EU budget would eventually be made available annually for defense research, the European Defense Industrial Development Program (EDIDP), which would allocate EU-funding biannually to support the development of defense equipment and technologies with an aim to boost competitiveness and innovation capacity, and new defense-related governance structures within the European External Action Service (the Military Planning and Conduct Capability, MPCC) and the European Commission (DG Defense Industry and Space) (see e.g., B{\'e}raud-Sudreau & Pannier, ; Martill & Sus, ; Sweeney & Winn, ; Tocci, ). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.",
year = "2022",
month = dec,
day = "18",
doi = "10.1080/13523260.2022.2155360",
language = "English",
pages = "1--28",
journal = "Contemporary Security Policy",
issn = "1352-3260",
publisher = "Taylor & Francis",
}