The European Union (EU) today is much more than a peace- and free trade project, having increasingly made efforts to carve out a place for itself as a security actor. With the new Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, the EU aims to enhance its influence as a regional and global crisis manager. Even though the EU has enacted structures to enable military activities outside the union over the years, the new Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC) stands out in the Strategic Compass. Based on the existing EU Battlegroup format, which has suffered from a number of structural issues and never been deployed, the RDC is meant to provide the union with the ability to respond rapidly to crises. Given the lack of interest in realising previous rapid reaction tools, how can further investments in such measures be motivated? This paper presents novel interview material from several EU institutions together with a text analysis of key documents. By employing the concept of “meaning-making” from the crisis management leadership literature, this paper explores how the EU legitimizes its enhanced ambitions as a military crisis manager in general and in relation to the RDC in particular.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine prompted a strong, concerted and immediate response by the EU that few may have anticipated in terms of unity and resolve among EU institutions and member states. In October 2022, the EU took its support for Ukraine to a new level by deciding to establish a military assistance mission (EUMAM) to Ukrainian armed forces to train as much as 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers. In many respects, this is a groundbreaking decision by the EU and its member states, similar to the commitment to provide Ukraine with lethal military aid through the European Peace Facility. For the first time in the history of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) the EU launches a military mission aimed at a country in its Eastern neighbourhood that is fraught with active and protracted military conflicts orchestrated by Russia. Second, unlike the EU’s previous efforts to build capacity of partner countries against irregular non-state forces, the EU now committed to provide training against conventional battle-hardened army of nuclear armed opponent. Third, the EUMAM is the first military CSDP mission for a third country taking place on the EU’s soil, with operational headquarters in Poland and Germany.

The decision to launch the mission, as well as its design, presents a puzzle, considering member states’ previously highly diverging preferences vis-à-vis Russia and on security and defence. Unlike many Central and Eastern European members, the EU’s main military powers – France and Germany – have overall been hesitant in pushing back against Russian aggression by providing Ukraine with meaningful military aid. In addition, the United Kingdom has already been successfully implementing a training mission for Ukrainian military that is similar in its scale and objectives and to which many EU and NATO member states contributed their personnel.

Probing neofunctionalist and intergovernmentalist propositions for explaining the launch and design of CSDP operations and missions, we find that a particular combination of functionalist pressures, supranational entrepreneurship, changing government preferences and interstate bargaining dynamics can explain the creation and set-up of EUMAM.