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Security and defence

The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) is an integral part of EU foreign policy. Through its military operations and civilian missions, the EU has contributed to regional and global stability. Since it's inception, the CSDP has responded to a shifting regional security context. It has played a vital role in crisis management in the EU's near and wider neighbourhood but it is also an essential part of the EU's broader approach to the protection of Europe and capacity building.

Although the Lisbon Treaty consolidated the EU's crisis management apparatus, the EU Global Strategy has set a new level of ambition for EU defence. In addition to the CSDP playing an operational role in the EU's integrated approach to crises, the EU Global Strategy has stressed the need for the EU to become a more capable and effective defence actor. Initiatives such as the European Defence Fund, the coordinated annual defence review (CARD) and more coherent financing for EU operations and capacity building efforts are all aimed at supporting the EU's strategic autonomy and the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base. The EUISS continues to support the development of CSDP through outreach activities and expert publications.

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    01January 1993
    Military cooperation: what structure for the future?
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    The end of the Cold War, the development of new political and military structures, the increased involvement of European forces in United Nations operations which may well involve a wider range of functions; all these developments make it necessary to re-examine the range of possible command arrangements for forces coming from various nations.

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    01November 1992
    European integration and nuclear deterrence after the Cold War
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    Since 1945, the existence of nuclear weapons has profoundly modified our thinking on strategic issues. Nowhere was that more true than in the Europe of the Cold War. With the end of the Cold War and the important progress made in the process of European integration, the roles of nuclear weapons and more generally deterrence in Europe need a new examination.

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    01November 1991
    European security integration in the 1990s
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    As the third of its Chaillot Papers the Institute is pleased to publish this essay by Dr Ian Gambles on European security integration in the 1990s. In a period in which we are having to examine radical restructuring of security in Europe following the historic changes of the last two years, Dr Gambles' paper provides an important reflection on some of the conceptual underpinnings for security analysis in Europe.

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    01March 1991
    European security across the Mediterranean
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    Whether the countries of the Mediterranean littoral are linked by special bonds of solidarity is and will remain a much-debated question. After the Second World War, anti-imperialist and non-aligned thinking advocated such solidarity on the grounds that countries as diverse as Egypt and Italy, or Spain and Algeria, were none the less equally subject to political and economic domination by the more advanced countries of Northern Europe and North America.

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    01March 1991
    European defence: why not the Twelve?
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    I am pleased that the first of the Institute's Chaillot Papers, which are intended to bring work undertaken in the Institute to a wider audience, should be a paper by my deputy, Nicole Gnesotto, on the current debate on security structures for Western Europe. When the Institute for Security Studies was established in July 1990, it took as one of its primary tasks work on the definition of a European security identity.

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