30 years after the Maastricht treaty, problematizing progress (or regress) of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) becomes even more complex in the context of Russian invasion of Ukraine which, under the pressure of “emergency narratives”, is revamping the topic of a “more integrated” CSDP. This panel aims to analyze these evolutions by focusing on two main research axes. Therefore we will focus first on the internal governance aspect of CSDP in this new strategic context. Are international crisis processes modifying CSDP internal governance, and if so, how ? Is there an emerging process of verticalization of decision-making structures underway, driven by securitization processes and emergency narratives? What consequences does the war in Ukraine and the new strategic context of the European continent have on European strategic thinking and external security institutions ? What progress and what challenges await the EU in the strategic area ?

The second dimension of our panel aims at investigating the impact of the conflitct in Ukraine and the return of high-intensity war in Europe on the EU’s external action and the EU’s actorness in international relations. Thirty years after Maastricht, what is the state of art of the European “normative approach” in the resolution of international crises? How does effective multilateralism (or the new multilateralism) react, progress or regress against international actors more inclined to Realpolitik and assertive methods? What direction have relations between NATO and the EU taken over the last three decades and what paths are emerging for the future?

The panel therefore proposes papers tackling these questions and more global dimensions of CDSP, presented by both young and confirmed scholars trying to enrich the debate on the way forxard for EU's defence policy in a changing security context. Methodological and theoretical pluralism among the panel is encouraged to better make sense of the impact of Ukrainian war on CSDP’s both internal and external aspects, and to add new promising perspectives to a growing literature on this topic.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reshaping the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and the nature of EU power. First, war on its doorstep has revitalised the EU’s desire to develop the CSDP and realise its ambition for Strategic Autonomy in security and defence. Central to this are appropriate military capabilities. Yet, over 20 years after CSDP was launched with the objective to ‘have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so’ it is still failing to realise this objective. While, the 2022 Strategic Compass, hastily reframed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, seeks to narrow Hill’s capability-expectation gap, significant political, economic, and military obstacles remain. Second, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is consolidating the shift in the nature of the EU power away from a more ‘normative approach’. While the EU continues to frame itself as focused norms and values, its objectives, actions, and capabilities suggest a shift to a greater focus on its strategic interests. This paper assesses these two interconnected developments by addressing two sets of questions. First, what military capabilities are required for what purposes and missions and to realise its ambition of strategic autonomy? Will the war in Ukraine provide the impetus to overcome the political, economic, and military obstacles that have hindered CSDP since its inception? Second, what is state of art of the EU’s ‘normative approach’? How does the war in Ukraine affect the nature of EU power? The paper argues that both these developments are significantly complicated by the transboundary nature of the threats facing the EU. While the war in Ukraine has galvanised efforts to develop CSDP’s strategic autonomy, the longstanding obstacles of political will, funding, prioritisation, and capabilities continue to undermine the EU’s ability to realise it’s ambitions. In addition, the transboundary nature of threats requires a diverse combination of capabilities spanning the civilian & military divide. At the same time, efforts to enhance CSDP, respond to Russia’s aggression, and address the wider transboundary threat environment have continued to push the EU toward a less normative and more geopolitical approach better conceptualised as a liberal or even realist power.

In the last year, old and new experts have saturated the fields of academic and media debates on the war in Ukraine. However, knowledge about the conflict has been created at institutional sites too, especially considering the commitments to conflict-specificity and context-sensitivity undertaken by the European Union and other international actors when deploying international interventions and crisis management capacities. The articles thus aims at analysing the functioning of EU's structures in charge of providing situational awareness, such as SitCen, EU Situation Room, Emergency Response Coordination Center, Hybrid CoE, as well as mapping the actors involved in processes of knowledge production, through both such institutional conduits and other ad hoc tools (i.e. need assessment missions). Our analysis intends to highlight voices and silences about the current war and how hierarchies of expertise are created to inform EU's interventions, policy-making, external action governance and CSDP planning.

The phenomenon of crisisification is a change in the nature of the processes by which collective decisions are made. In our theoretical framework, crisisification is a step beyond securitization (Buzan, Weaver and De Wilde 1998). A situation where decision makers are not only requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure, but they are at the same time facing the “existential threat” (the identified “source of crisis”) with no or poor political strategy.

According to the discourse of the EU institutions (EEAS 2021), past and, above all, future crises play an essential role in the construction of the Strategic Compass and the “next CSDP”: this could mean that crisisificaiton could, potentially, “prevail” or change on the traditional method of decision-making – i.e., based on long consultations with stakeholders, a long process of mediation and balance between positions of a consistent number of actors to achieve solutions based on consensus and long-term policies.

This type of change can take place both following informal and informal dynamics, from which can also arise new decision-making methods and, therefore, new ways of organizing or re-organizing the decision-making structure of the European Union in the field of security and defense. The war in Ukraine is having consequences on these dynamics, accelerated by urgency discourses that imply a faster and more effective decision-making to face the perceived “existential threat” (identified in Russia). The Strategic Compass, the Versailles declaration, and the debate on the reform of the voting system within the Council suggest that crisisification dynamics are pushing political actors and institutions towards a verticalization of the decision-making system (which could represent a sort of “soft state building process”).

Verticalization would act on two axes, the first relating to the will to act politically in a less kaleidoscopic and holocratic system, while the second in the context of military integration. This research questions and develops along these two axes and will be carried out following semi-structured interviews with military, political and civilian personnel at national and European level.