Abstract
In 2020, EU member-states allocated nearly €8 billion out of the EU's 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) to a new European Defence Fund (EDF). The creation of the Fund broke long-standing legal and ethical taboos against using EU budget money for defence and expanded the authority of the Commission in defence industrial policy, an area vital to national sovereignty. This thesis investigates the European Defence Fund as a case study of how European integration can take place in an area of “high politics” thought to be particularly resistant to integration. It adds nuance to the concept of a “sovereignty orthodoxy” in defence policy and contributes original insight into the nature of the defence sector and its “special” standing in EU integration literature.EU officials involved in the creation of the Fund at the time referred to their initiative as a “Copernican revolution”, insinuating that they were “changing the sun in the system”: defence industrial policy making in the EU would in future revolve around the Commission rather than the member-states. Analysis of the EDF so far has similarly predominantly focused on the role of the Commission as the initiator and main beneficiary of its creation. The roles and objectives of national actors in the creation of the Fund remain under-explored. This thesis argues that even though the creation of the European Defence Fund broke taboos, it was no “Copernican revolution”. Instead, it stemmed from complex alliances that crossed national-EU boundaries, resulting in an institutional blend of intergovernmental and supranational elements.
Theoretically, the research uses the lines of inquiry identified by the two dominant actor-driven theoretical approaches to European integration – supranationalism and intergovernmentalism – as heuristics to analyse the policy entrepreneurship of EU institutional actors and the domestic preferences of relevant EU member-states. Industry influence is examined both at the domestic level – in the relationship between governments and defence firms – and at the supranational level, where defence industry representatives served as expert advisors and legitimacy-providers to the Commission.
Conceptually, the thesis builds on the argument that portraying European integration processes as competence battles between national and supranational actors obscures the nuances of actors’ interests, motivations, and tactics, and the complex ecosystem of their interactions. To this end, it relies on the policy cycle as a structuring tool, which allows for an in-depth review of the interplay between national and supranational actors at each stage of the policy processes – agenda-setting, agenda-shaping, and decision-making.
Methodologically, the thesis deploys process tracing as a main method for within-case analysis, drawing on primary and secondary written sources, as well as on 31 semi-structured elite interviews with officials from member-states, the Commission, the EDA, the EU Parliament, the European External Action Service, as well as with European defence firm representatives, who were directly involved in the process leading up to the creation of the EDF.
Supranational policy entrepreneurship was crucial during the process of focusing policy makers’ attention on the issue of the European Defence Fund, maintaining the momentum behind the idea of EU defence funding for two decades, and progressively undermining the “taboos” against EU defence industrial integration – which were present both among member- states and inside the EU institutions. Nonetheless, national governments imposed checks on the ambitions of supranational advocates. The Commission was forced to accept major restrictions on its authority, and the European Parliament, while initially instrumental in paving the way for the EDF’s creation, emerged with limited scrutiny powers. At the agenda-shaping and decision-making stages, dividing lines did not run strictly between EU institutions and member-states. Rather, national actors entered into alliance with supranational policy entrepreneurs, in order to pursue their ideological and distributional interests.
The Fund’s final institutional design leaves member-states in a position to determine the program’s success or failure. At the same time, it provides the Commission with the possibility to prove its value and progressively expand its authority and identity from market regulator to industrial policy shaper in the field of defence.
| Date of Award | 1 Feb 2024 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Anand Menon (Supervisor) & Benjamin Kienzle (Supervisor) |