Introduction [1]

1While the main seats of European Union (EU) and NATO have made a home in the dynamic Belgian capital, some five kilometres away from each other, for most of their institutional life they treated each other as if they were on different continents. Historical decisions and circumstances have led to each looking in different directions: one was responsible for collective defence and deterrence and the other for economic, social and regulatory development as well as softer areas of security. The two were thus often seen as different as Mars and Venus.

2Fast-forward to 2016 and the picture looks unequivocally different: a flourishing bilateral EU-NATO relationship, broad and sustained political support from their leaders, a clearly defined joint agenda and a much-praised Joint Declaration to gather them all under its umbrella. [2] The relationship was going so well that its parties decided to go a step further by signing yet another Joint Declaration in 2018. [3] Such steps are addressing long series of plaidoiries by academics, think tankers and officials for the two to see the forest for the trees and work together to address common challenges. Whether it is capacity building in Europe’s East and South or beefing up Allies’ cyber defences, it is undoubtable that security challenges can be much more thoroughly addressed if NATO and the EU pool their expertise together and use their instruments coherently.

3The post-Cold War era, characterised by its “long peace”, has seen NATO assuming a variety of roles which would traditionally be considered EU business, such as crisis management and resilience. In face of a deteriorating security environment and a volatile geopolitical climate, the EU also developed renewed defence-related ambitions. The general view, to use former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel’s words, is that today Europe is “a vegetarian in a world of carnivores” [4]. Given the complexity and multidisciplinary nature of threats, it is undisputable that Europeans must rebuild and reinforce their security and defence capacities. Defending European interests and maintaining the prosperity of the continent is only possible in conditions of peace. In this vein, it is important to note that the ultimate goal of defence is in fact peace. The general consensus recognises that this goal can only be achieved as 28 (even 27), and in tandem with NATO.

4With the aim of contributing to the academic discussion on the EU-NATO partnership in a policy-informed manner, this article will analyse the evolution of this partnership in a rather chronological manner, zooming into several key issues of convergence and urgency for the international security community. The paper takes stock of some of the achievements, critiques, weaknesses and future opportunities for the EU-NATO relationship. It begins with a brief historical overview to frame a broader context and the backdrop through which the relationship has been developing. Continuing, recent shifts in the security environment will be outlined as well as the key elements which prompted a change in tradition for EU-NATO relations. Following, some of the main building blocks forming the bedrock of this cooperation will be discussed, ranging from military mobility, to maritime security and hybrid threats. Recent European defence integration initiatives will also be addressed as well as the looming element of Brexit which, regardless of the final outcome, is a highly pertinent element. The paper then goes on to discuss areas for improvement. The complex matter of strategic cultures and threat perceptions will be framed in the EU-NATO context. The paper concludes with a prospective chapter with an outlook for the future and potential for further deepening the relationship. Concluding on a positive but realistic note, the paper makes the case for a strong European pillar in NATO, to the benefit of EU members, non-EU NATO members and the overall transatlantic relationship.

5As the EU does not possess any forces or military capabilities itself, its members have a single set of forces to deploy in pursuit of their interests in whichever format they deem suitable. There is no appetite among EU members to compete with NATO in any shape and form. This means that, simply put, NATO will also reap from what is being sown through EU defence integration initiatives. If political will is maintained, the result could be an EU able to take more responsibility for its own security, which in turn could end up balancing the transatlantic relationship and remove it from the shadows of the seemingly immortal burden-sharing debate.

Once upon a time 70 years ago…

6Since the incipient life of the European communities that were to later on become the European Union, the common link with NATO was clear: peace and prosperity on the European continent and the promotion of a rules-based international order anchored in international law. These common goals and the shared value system between NATO and the EU still stand true as NATO celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and the Schuman Declaration during the next one.

7Shortly after the Washington Treaty was signed in 1949, the EU’s six founding members [5] had created the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. One year later, the same countries also attempted to create a European Defence Community based on plans authored by French Prime Minister René Pleven and drafted by Jean Monnet to organise European defence at the supranational level. The plan never came to fruition as the French Assemblée Nationale ultimately refused to ratify it. Arguably, this set in custom the division of labour between the Europeans and NATO: the former ensured the economic prosperity necessary to contribute to the latter’s defence tasks [6].

8It was not until the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that “the eventual framing of a common defence policy” was again under discussion at the European level [7]. Six years later, a highly symbolic moment was about to occur in Saint-Malo. The EU’s two main military players decided to reconcile their divergent visions of European defence. In French Brittany, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac reached a compromise: the EU can develop defence capabilities but they should not come in competition with NATO. The year 1999 saw the bombing of Yugoslavia and a crippled European reaction to the war, which ultimately determined the launch of the European Security and Defence Policy, today known as the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

9In the late 1990s, however, the little cooperation between the EU and NATO was often shadowed by the sensitive issues in the Greece-Cyprus-Turkey triangle. As a former British Permanent Representative to NATO said, this is what “ensured that for many years there were no useful exchanges on any issue other than Bosnia” between the EU and NATO [8]. At the conception of the CSDP, the distinction was clear: the EU is investing in crisis management operations while leaving territorial defence in its entirety to NATO. In the early 2000s, this made sense. Russia, the former Cold War antagonist, was contained and was increasingly seen as a prospective partner. In the meantime, however, the terrorist threat made it to the top of the security agenda to the extent of marking the only invocation to date of NATO’s Article 5, after the 9/11 attacks. Thereon, NATO saw itself doing a slight detour from conventional collective defence on European territory to out-of-area operations in its South. The early 2000s also saw the first concrete, institutionalised EU-NATO cooperation in the form of the Berlin Plus Agreements. [9] These allowed the EU to make use of NATO assets and capabilities for its crisis management operations.

The Rising Action

10For a Europe which had become comfortable in the long post-Cold War peace which aided its prosperity, the year 2014 marked a drastic turning point in European strategic thinking. This occurred as Russian troops were illegally occupying Crimea and starting a hybrid war in Eastern Ukraine. Thereon, Russia was labelled as an official challenger of the status-quo, dissatisfied with its position in it. Despite a relative decline of Russia’s economy, its armed forces maintain significance and are even backed up by much cheaper reinforcements to disrupt societies and democracies, armies of bots and online trolls.

11The arc of instability in Europe’s South is characterised by proliferating conflicts which due to geographical, historical and political reasons, tend to spill over to other countries, including European ones. Economic, social and political inequalities permeating the psyche of societies in the Middle East and North Africa leading to social unrest, violent uprisings and even terrorism. Although the EU is doing its part in promoting stability through various civil, military and humanitarian measures, including crisis management, peacekeeping, stabilisation and prevention missions, severe limitations persist. As this paper goes to show, this is an area with extreme potential for deeper EU-NATO cooperation.

12There is an amalgam of additional threats and challenges that prompted a rethinking of Europe’s role in the world. One is the fast development of new technologies that will redefine warfare and military planning. Others relate to a potential trend towards a transactional US commitment to the Alliance and the necessity to accommodate China in the largely Western-designed international system. While unfortunate to include the imminent departure of the United Kingdom from the EU in this list, instead of increasing security, Brexit will likely result in the opposite. As it stands, it is difficult to envisage a scenario related to any of the above-mentioned challenges in which less cooperation between the EU and NATO would make a situation more secure.

13The EU-level reflection about these changes culminated into the release of the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) on 28 June 2016. Drafted alike a grand strategy, the EUGS outlines the EU’s priority areas of action, from “the east into Central Asia, and to the south down to Central Africa” and sets tasks for the defence and pursuit of its interests [10]. Its launch is often recorded as the point of departure for the EU’s defence renaissance or as the European Commission put it, “after years of crisis, Europe is bouncing back” [11]. This optimism is not evenly shared since the orchestra of EU defence initiatives that have followed the EUGS have often been portrayed as a Potemkin village given the EU’s negative track record on defence initiatives. Sceptics argue that the proposed initiatives lack the necessary ambition, strong enforcement mechanisms, trust and sustained political will to solve Europe’s defence fragmentation and weak defence industrial base. They condemn initiatives such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation and the European Defence Fund to live the same fate as the rest of the EU’s past defence projects: grandiose in writing but limited in practice.

142016 was also a key year for EU-NATO cooperation. Not only does the EUGS commit to “keep deepening the transatlantic bond and our partnership with NATO” but the two also realised that they agree on more than what they disagree on and formalised their cooperation. Their fourth and most recent progress report outlined achievements in fields ranging from military mobility to cyber defence and confirmed that both the EU and NATO “remain firmly committed to take this cooperation forward in a swift, fully coordinated and coherent way” [12]. The rising action closing the chapter of EU-NATO mutual indifference is that European countries are clearly signalling their intention of taking more responsibility for their own security and in doing so in close cooperation with NATO.

Diagnosing the Current State of Affairs

15There is increasing realisation that NATO’s defence posture can be complemented by the EU’s legislative, regulatory and financial instruments, and vice versa. The added value of this complementarity has been proven before. For instance, during the deployment of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, as one of NATO’s responsibilities was to provide surveillance aircraft, the EU did its part in negotiating and passing legislation on the Passenger Name Records, which was used to identify returning foreign fighters [13]. While NATO officials are starting to become more aware of the internal-external security nexus and of civil-military interdependencies, there is even broader room for cooperation with EU instruments such as the Civilian CSDP Compact, for example. The commonalities are self-evident when it comes to defence research and capability development projects.

16Setting the stage for a suite of joint actions and staff consultations is the EU-NATO Joint Declaration signed in Warsaw on 8 July 2016, two weeks after the release of the EU Global Strategy. “New impetus and new substance” was going to define a new chapter for the reborn EU-NATO strategic partnership [14]. The declaration rightly identifies their common challenges and deep interconnectedness, stemming from no less than 22 overlapping members. The Declaration marks a key shift in mentality through a catchphrase that would end up being restated at every occasion by the organisations’ representatives: a stronger EU makes a stronger NATO. The Declaration also outlined seven areas for cooperation including hybrid threats and cyber, maritime security, defence capabilities and industry, capacity building and common exercises. These areas were complemented by two additional lists of proposals, adopted in December 2016 and December 2017, making it a total of 74 common proposals.

17Since 2016, EU-NATO cooperation has been a priority agenda item for both parties and one with a successful implementation track record. The following sections will zoom into specific components of the EU-NATO strategic partnership, beginning with the flurry of EU defence initiatives and continuing with the case of military mobility. Maritime security will be addressed subsequently, followed by hybrid threats and the impact of Brexit on Euro-Atlantic security.

What Could We Do Better?

What Lies Ahead for the EU-NATO Relationship?

40Strategic autonomy, security threats and safety do not distinguish between the EU and NATO and fragmentation results in vulnerability. The idea of strategic autonomy for Europe has in the last period received high visibility and been the subject of heated policy and military discussions. Although the European Council called for the EU to “enhance its strategic autonomy and its ability to act with partners” [38] already in 2013, it was not until the EU Global Strategy stated its “ambition of strategic autonomy for the European Union” that the concept resurfaced in the debate.

41All strategic EU documents formulated since the EUGS make it clear that the EU does not intend to, and realistically cannot in its current state, embark on this journey by itself. It has met words with action in its vision of a closer EU-NATO future partnership, boosted by a stronger and more reliable European pillar in the Alliance. This is reaffirmed by the new President of the European Commission and former German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen who confirmed that the EU “will stay transatlantic and become more European” in pursuit of a true European Defence Union [39].

42One of the proposed policy prescriptions for an effective European capability development in tandem with NATO is the formal creation of a European pillar in NATO [40]. This idea is not new. Such a creation would have the advantage of more deeply involving non-EU members such as Norway and possibly the UK in the future. Another idea is to create a European level of ambition within NATO. [41] This would entail European defence capability development being prioritised according to the NDPP, relying on the assumption that European chiefs of defence predominantly regard the NDPP as the “real gold standard of military planning”. The weakness of this assumption lies in the fact that the burden-sharing debate is persisting and European capabilities have not dramatically improved under NATO’s patronage. This demonstrates in fact that the obstacle might not necessarily be solely about who coordinates defence planning. Additionally, through the EU’s CARD process—which is developed in tandem with the NDPP—there is defence coordination with non-NATO EU Member States and the contribution of a broader mass of defence experts to the process itself.

43Europeans may also find themselves confronted with the uncomfortable “nuclear” problem when discussing what strategic autonomy means and what it requires. This conversation is difficult and controversial for political and public perception reasons. But this must be done for reasons ranging from Russia’s approach to nuclear weapons deployment scenarios, the fatality of the INF Treaty and, not the least, to the future of the US-Iran quarrel.

44The EU’s intentions of achieving strategic autonomy have been clearly voiced. The concept, although with different connotations for different countries [42], is even listed as a selection criterion for projects applying for EDF funding. Different understandings of what strategic autonomy for Europe should entail could also make for an open conversation in an EU-NATO setting where the views of sceptical as well as committed Atlanticists are represented. Such an exercise should be able to produce an unambiguous narrative of how Europeans can aim to be strategically autonomous and transatlantic at the same time.

45NATO also has some uncomfortable conversations ahead. These include a potentially weakening US commitment to the Alliance in the future, tensions between Allies’ industrial interests, as the recent events regarding Turkey’s weapon deals demonstrated, and of course, the looming Brexit issue. It is not unrealistic to imagine a scenario in which NATO becomes paralysed as a result of blockages caused by tensions between Allies. It is in this scenario where a strong European pillar with a certain degree of strategic autonomy would come in handy. Foresight analysts are even imagining how the defence of Europe would be executed in the event of a NATO dissolution—it does not look too promising [43]. Attracting journalists and think tankers like moths to a flame, President Macron’s less than subtle statements in his The Economist interview [44] did point out some of the tensions the Alliance still has to resolve.

46A strong narrative for transatlantic defence and solidarity in a world of continuous great power competition is imperative. The transatlantic community—including the EU and NATO should be mindful of the saying “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”. There is no closer partnership between two regions than the one between Europe and North America. Adversaries with a competing worldview will not hesitate to exploit the exposed wounds of the complex transatlantic organism. Strong cooperation between the EU and NATO can be a powerful antidote for boosting the immune system of the relationship, if administered correctly. Ultimately, this comes back to the necessity of formulating the right narrative, one that convincingly demonstrates the benefits of a strong European pillar in NATO and opportunities stemming from a strategically autonomous Europe, on a more equal footing with the United States. A deeply entrenched cooperation should ensure that even when acting separately, the EU and NATO’s actions are coherent and complementary.

47“You cannot teach an old dog new tricks” should not apply to the transatlantic relationship. While Europeans are used to enjoy the protective American security umbrella and the latter to use this influence strategically, it is clear that business as usual is no longer an option. How to take the relationship to the next level for the benefit of both partners is the new trick that has to be learnt. The more branches the relationship has, the stronger it will be. Deeper EU-NATO cooperation can also be honed through closer relations between the European Parliament and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, for example. Or in institutional academic circles such as the European University Institute, the NATO Defence College and the NATO Defence School. As mentioned previously, the regular exchanges between NATO and EU staff could go further through a potential staff secondment system. Often compared to a Sisyphean task in previous years, the relationship between the EU and NATO seems mature enough to deliver the rock to the summit of the hill without seeing it fall back from where it began.

48While much has already been achieved, the way ahead will not be an easy sail. Strong winds coming from most directions of a compass have shaken the transatlantic boat and exposed some of its cracks and vulnerabilities. The recent events in Northern Syria are another dent in this respect. NATO-EU cooperation is key for agreeing on a common transatlantic destination and for ensuring that the boat makes it there in one piece. Rather than commemorating the NATO and the Schuman Declaration’s 70^th anniversaries in 2019 and respectively in 2020, political, policy and technical efforts should focus on ensuring there will be a reason to commemorate a centennial anniversary instead.