This paper provides a novel conceptualization of bricolage as a strategy of the European Commission for incremental supranational integration and competence-maximization. Specifically, we suggest three distinct strategies of bricolage (discursive, budgetary and organizational) arguing that their cumulative effects have been central for progressively moving integration of EU defence research and development forward, which culminated in the establishment of the European Defence Fund and the Commission’s DG DEFIS.

Building communication upon communication, the Commission used discursive bricolage to set the conditions for employing existing EU financial and organizational resources to advance its interests. With its incremental bricolage approach that builds on preliminary, familiar and informal tools, the Commission has managed to mitigate sovereignty concerns of member states, progressively nudging them towards deeper integration, whilst aligning the interests of key stakeholders with its policy initiatives. Overall, our paper shows that the Commission can promote supranational integration in through the cumulative bricolage tools even in heavily intergovernmental domains like security and defence.

As the European Union (EU) grows beyond its origins as a civilian actor it has faced some growing pains. In some cases, hamstrung by the design of the EU itself or through disagreement among the EU member states, some challenges have been unique. While others, such as staffing, equipment, goal setting, and organisation, would be broadly familiar to any security actor. This paper addresses the question of what has the EU learned from twenty years of its civilian and military deployments? Is there evidence of improving structure, coordination, and effectiveness of EU operations? And if so, is this learning, representative of updating beliefs and structures, or are contextual factors more important to explain differentiation in the planning, structure, and results of EU missions? To do so, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mali, and Ukraine. In doing so, it highlights types of learning which may be applicable within each mission, over the long timeframe of some missions, as well as identifies limited yet important lessons learning processes taking place across missions. Overall, it finds that the EU has learned some key lessons but is generally hampered by its organisational and treaty structure.

The digitization of society and human life is a phenomenon arising from the last decades. Parallel to digital development, cyberthreats have emerged and challenge the conventional security concepts, which, in turn, have required responses through the creation of policies and action instruments adapted to digital life. In this sense, cyberspace has become a transnational domain where States act through cybersecurity agendas. However, these agendas neglect the interests and needs of people and communities that experience digitization in their daily lives, ignoring the human factor and, therefore, the individual's safety. This context triggered an academic debate around “breaking the cybersecurity dilemma” towards a human-centered cybersecurity approach that promotes digital Human Security. In this field, the European Union adopted, in 2013, the first EU Cybersecurity Strategy and more recently, in 2020, the EU Cybersecurity Strategy for the Digital Decade, designed to strengthen Europe's collective resilience against cyberthreats. Thus, our aim is to answer two pertinent questions: Can the concept of Human Security provide a more holistic cybersecurity framework with the aim of simultaneously achieving national security and human security? Has the EU been developing cybersecurity policies from a Human Security perspective?

The existing literature on European strategic autonomy focuses almost invariably on European perspectives, and as a consequence, the American viewpoint has been overlooked. This doctoral dissertation fills some of the scholarly gap by reviewing European strategic autonomy from the US perspective taking into consideration both systemic and domestic level factors. The analysis focuses on how the United States has defined, viewed and reacted to European security and defence integration and to attempts to develop strategic autonomy since 1998. The focus is not only on the official position of the US, formed by (elected) politicians and decision-makers, but also on the more unofficial views presented by foreign policy influencers, such as those working for universities, research institutes and think tanks. The views of the general American public are omitted from the analysis. The underlying purpose of the research is to form a comprehensive view on how the European defence integration has impacted transatlantic relations since the end of the Cold War, and what kind of impact it may have in the future.

Much of the previous research on the topic has focused on material factors when explaining why and how the US attitude towards European strategic autonomy has varied from support to scepticism. Following the premises of neoclassical realism, I argue that the US approach towards European defence integration is formed of both material and ideational factors. While the starting point of the analysis is on the international system, incorporating domestic factors and ideas is essential in order to understand the bigger picture behind the US approach on European strategic autonomy.

The goal of the research is to detect how different actors in the US political landscape view European strategic autonomy and what kinds of aspects are raised into the political debate. To do this, the focus is on two intervening variables: political decision-makers’ perceptions and foreign policy influencers’ perceptions. On a practical level, this means analysing speeches, comments and statements by the US presidents, secretaries of state and defence, and key political advisors for foreign, security and defence policy (political decision-makers). On the other hand, the analysis focuses on material provided by research institutes, think tanks and other interest groups working in the field of foreign, security and defence policy and transatlantic relations (foreign policy influencers).