EUROPEAN DEFENCE – CHANGE OF COURSE IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC?
EUROPEAN DEFENCE – CHANGE OF COURSE IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC?

Summary/Abstract: Covid-19 pandemic has hit the EU in one of the periods most abundant in challenges, in which European security was already questioned by a range of trends built up in the previous years. Given the many security challenges, the relations between EU Member states, as well as the burst of the initiatives aiming at developing the military capabilities, in addition to the high probability of an economic and financial crisis following the sanitary one, by this paper, we set ourselves to analyse the repercussions of the pandemic on the development of European defence. To this effect, we departed from the analysis of EU dynamics in terms of solidarity or the lack of solidarity in the pandemic context in relation to the attributions assumed in this respect; subsequently we tried to estimate how the pandemic impact on European cohesion can touch on the continuation of the projects meant to support EU’s strategic autonomy. The analysis, focused on the events of the first semester of 2020, concludes that Brussels’ actions for managing the pandemic were in accordance with the organization’s institutional and financial capacity. However, the extent of pandemic’s effects made them seem or even be insufficient, which has been turned to advantage within the disinformation campaigns launched under these conditions.Considering the economic context, it is highly likely for the European defence to not experience a rapid advance on the short term, but, international competitiveness, uncertainty and instability can constitute the stimuli for developing EU’s hard power.

• Details
• Contents