Strengthening Europe’s Capacity to Act in Foreign and Security Policy

Securitisation of EU external action

In order to contain the problem of incom­patible interests between member states, a process of securitisation has developed in the EU’s external action (Title V, Treaty on European Union) since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, wherein the solution to structural problems in this policy area is simultaneously excluded.

The term “securitisation” was coined in the 1990s by academics from the so-called Copenhagen School. According to this theo­retical framework, the primary objective of state action is to legitimise military policy measures that, under normal circumstances, would not be enforceable. The success of this endeavour, as postulated by this theory, depends on the effective presentation or “framing” of issues as potential threats to the state’s own population.

Applying this approach to current EU policy, it is evident that the CFSP – along with the other areas of external action (trade, association and development policy), which are the exclusive or shared competence both of the EU and its member states – is being orientated towards armaments and defence policy through the introduction of new financial instruments. Con­sequent­ly, the CFSP is to a certain extent permeated by its security and defence policy component, the CSDP. Additionally, matters such as partnership and sectoral agreements, which were formerly regarded as rather technocratic and apolitical, are now be­coming a focal point of Europe’s assertive security and defence policy. This process of securitising foreign policy enables EU insti­tutions, particularly the European Commission, to gain access to new policy areas (defence industry) and to stimulate other policy areas (enlargement, sanctions). In the domain of migration, EU institutions are adapting their policies so that they align with those of the member states through a process of policy framing, in the hopes of aligning existing rules with the protection of EU territory. Finally, the foreign economic policy dimension of the EU’s external ac­tion is undergoing a recalibration towards the goals of de-risking, friend-shoring and de-coupling. In the context of power polit­ics, the Commission appears to be particularly well-positioned to benefit from these trends, given the extension of internal market rules to the procurement of defence equipment. The Commission’s potential expansion of its role in defence policy by involving private companies and security actors in the political process at the EU level could also serve to strengthen its negotiating position vis-à-vis member states in the context of joint armaments cooperation.

At the same time, the overarching integration trend of securitisation is reaching its limits in areas where the EU-27 is politi­cally divided and not in a position to act coherently towards third countries in terms of strategy and foreign trade.

Sanctions of a new quality

Since the beginning of the full-scale in­vasion of Ukraine by Russia, the EU has implemented an unparalleled sanctions regime against Moscow. Expanding on the restrictions initiated in 2014 as part of the annexation of Crimea, the EU has adopted 16 sanctions packages to date, targeting over 1,800 individuals and more than 500 organisations. The measures encompass travel bans, the freezing of assets, and the denial of access to financial and economic resources. In response to the death of Aleksei Navalnyi, the heads of Russian prison facilities and high-ranking Ministry of Justice officials have also been targeted.

However, the expansion of the European sanctions regime has not been limited to Russia. In January 2024, the Council of the EU (Council) adopted a decision to impose sanctions against all supporters of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, thus supple­menting the direct measures taken against both terrorist organisations from the pre­vious year. After months of negotiations, which were initially blocked by Germany and others, the EU foreign minis­ters also agreed on sanctions against radical Israeli settlers in the West Bank in March 2024. Further sanctions were imposed on Iran, particularly in the context of the attack on Israel in April 2024 and the ongoing supply of weapons to Russia, as well as against Syria. Existing restrictions were extended and expanded against Venezuela, the Demo­cratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Belarus and Myanmar.

Alongside the increase in the number of sanctions, the EU is also improving the effectiveness of its sanctions. With regard to Russia, this was particularly evident in the Council’s decision in May 2024 to use the interest income from the frozen assets of the Russian central bank for military equip­ment and the reconstruction of Ukraine. In the same month, the EU expanded the scope of its sanctions. They now also cover military support for Russia’s war of aggres­sion through drones and missiles as well as the export of the necessary components. These decisions are primarily aimed at Iran, which was subject to further restrictions at the same time. In April 2024, the Council and Parliament also agreed on the introduction of criminal offences for corresponding violations against the continued circumvention of sanctions imposed on Russia. In future, not only individuals but also com­panies can be penalised for circumventing sanctions. This reinforces the impression of a trend towards the strengthening of Euro­pean sanctions instruments in terms of secu­rity policy. This is characterised in particu­lar by the replacement of traditional sanc­tions against human rights violations with coercive measures against state actors.

Securitisation of third country agreements

For several years, the EU has been using agreements with third countries not only to manage migration and security, but also to increase the security of its resources.

In the area of migration and security, the EU signed a partnership agreement with Albania in September 2023, providing for enhanced operational cooperation in the fight against cross-border crime and irregu­lar migration. Similar agreements had pre­viously been signed with Serbia (renewed in June 2024), the Republic of Moldova, Monte­negro and North Macedonia. The seventh and eighth donor conferences on the future of Syria and the region in June 2023 and May 2024 were strongly influenced by migra­tion policy objectives, with Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq receiving finan­cial support for their willingness to host refugees.

In addition to the Middle East, Africa has been the focus of Europe’s migration and security efforts. In July 2023, the EU signed an economic and migration agreement with Tunisia. Similar agreements with Egypt and Mauritania followed in March 2024. Migra­tion management is also included in the mandates of EU missions and operations. Agreements to this effect have been con­cluded with the respective partner states. The EU has provided several million euros through the European Peace Facility (EPF) for military training in Benin, Ghana, Cam­eroon, Somalia, Côte d’Ivoire and the Afri­can Union. At the same time, the Coun­cil extended the mandates of several EU train­ing missions, including in Mozambique and Libya. Memoranda of understanding will be concluded with the third countries con­cerned to implement these mandates, all of which have a security focus. The EU Security and Defence Initia­tive in the Gulf of Guinea focuses on training soldiers and police officers from the four littoral states to coun­ter terrorist threats. The initial decision of August 2023 only covered Ghana and Benin. However, in September 2023, the mission was extended to Côte d’Ivoire and Togo.

New financial instruments for rearming the member states…

The number of financial instruments in the EU’s security and defence policy has also increased since Donald Trump’s first term in office. Probably the most important pil­lar of this development so far is the European Defence Fund (EDF), which was introduced in 2021 and has a budget of around €8 bil­lion (the Commission initially proposed €13 billion). The EDF funds collaborative research on defence equipment and co-finances its development. Prior to this, the EU had launched the Preparatory Action on Defence Research (PADR) and the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP). PADR was launched for the period 2017–2019, while the EDIDP was launched for the period 2019–2020. Although the EDF and its predecessors only funded activi­ties related to the research and development phase of defence equipment, Russia’s full-scale invasion immediately changed the focus of the EU’s defence funding instruments. The European Defence Industry Re­inforcement through common Procurement Act (EDIRPA), created in 2023, aims to pro­mote the joint procurement of equipment by member states through targeted in­cen­tives. As such, it is intended to complement the EDF. EDIRPA has a budget of €310 mil­lion for its tasks – taken from 2023 and 2024 budget surpluses – which is well below the €500 million envisaged by the Commission. This is due to the increased funding requirements for the Act in Sup­port of Ammunition Production (ASAP), which aims to increase ammunition pro­duction capacity in the EU-27. ASAP focuses on rebuilding member states’ stockpiles, which have been depleted as a result of supplying Ukraine with large calibre am­munition and missiles. ASAP currently has €500 million available from these budget surpluses for this purpose.

Finally, at the special summit of the Euro­pean Council in March 2025, it was agreed to adapt the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) lending criteria for previously excluded activities in the defence sector and to increase the volume of financing avail­able. This is intended to facilitate close co­operation between the Bank and the Euro­pean Defence Agency (EDA). The financial commitments will be accompanied by the EDIRPA Regulation from October 2023 and the extension in May 2024 of the EDA’s powers in the area of defence procurement. In March 2024, the Commission also pre­sented a proposal for a regulation on the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP). The initiative is linked to a fund of €1.5 billion for the remainder of the cur­rent multiannual financial framework, which should help to consolidate the short-term instruments EDIRPA and ASAP until 2027. The EDIP is still under negotiation between the Commission and the member states, and it remains to be seen to what extent these fundamental shifts in the European security order can accelerate this process.

… and for the military training of third countries

The extra-budgetary EPF has become another cornerstone in the financing of European security. The EPF was set up to finance the joint costs of EU military operations (replac­ing the Athena mechanism); to support the military capabilities of third countries or international and regional organisations; or to cover the costs of explicitly military aspects of peace support operations con­ducted by a third country or a regional or international organisation.

The funds available to the EPF for the period 2021–2027 were initially capped at €5.69 billion, but were increased in several steps to €17 billion as a result of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. In March 2024, the Council decided to further in­crease the EPF by a total of €5 billion in support of Kyiv.

Beyond military assistance, the EU has set up a separate Ukraine facility under the EPF that came into force in March 2024 and will provide the country on the banks of the Dnieper with up to €50 billion for re­con­struction and modernisation over the next four years. In November 2023, mem­ber states had already agreed to provide €194 million for the European Union Assistance Mission to Ukraine (EUMAM). Finally, the EU also extended its mission to reform Ukraine’s security sector until 2027. In this way, Brussels is increasingly building a sec­ond pillar of support for Ukraine that goes beyond direct military assistance and sup­ports the country’s EU membership pros­pect after a possible end to the war. In June 2024, the member states opened acces­sion negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova.

These various activities clearly show that the member states and the Commission are quite willing to create instruments for the direct and indirect financing of armaments and defence projects.

Despite this progress, there is still a lack of serious and effective initiatives to address the structural shortcomings of European foreign, security and defence policy. The European defence sector remains highly frag­mented, with duplicated military capabilities of larger member states and a lack of effective central coordination. The Commission’s ReArm Europe initiative of March 2025, which includes a €150 billion loan to mobilise additional defence spend­ing, is also unlikely to help overcome the fragmentation of the defence sector. It remains to be seen to what extent the announced adjustment of the Stability and Growth Pact’s national escape clause – or a fundamental revision of the pact – can mobilise the targeted €650 billion in addi­tional national defence spending.

Outcomes and options for Europeanisation

A closer look at the process of securitisation the EU’s external action provides several insights into Europe’s capacity to act in foreign and security policy. First, securitisation is a deliberate “policy” of EU institutions, which identify areas where they are increasingly re-orientating or refocusing their external action according to strategic security interests. One example is the GGS, which can be seen as an EU infrastructure policy counteroffensive to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Second, in its external relations, the EU is consciously seeking to transfer integration in one area (e.g. the single market) to other areas (e.g. raw materials and environ­mental policy). One example is the agree­ment with Serbia on lithium mining, which is intended to serve as a building block for the technological and environmental trans­formation of the internal market.

Third, private and public actors are work­ing closely with the European Com­mission to align projects, funding or invest­ment programmes in third countries with secure supply chains and the EU’s resource security (e.g. the GGS).

The process of securitisation may be justified in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Yet, it has not solved the core problem of the EU’s (in)abil­ity to act in foreign and security policy. On the contrary, the EU’s room for manoeuvre in foreign and security policy vis-à-vis the United States has been further reduced. The bottom line is that the securitisation of the transatlantic relationship, as outlined above, will favour transactionalism in foreign and security policy. The securitisation – and thus the narrowing of the EU’s foreign poli­cy framework – will not contribute to­wards strengthening Europe’s ability to act.

The EU’s only remaining opportunity to assert itself in the new geopolitical era of the Trump administration is through insti­tutional reform. To this end, it has two op­tions (see SWP Comment 2/2019): 1) a fun­da­mental structural reform of European foreign and security policy, including the introduction of qualified majority voting and the provision of massive financial resources from diversified sources (EU bud­get, joint borrowing, changes to the EIB framework). This is because “strategic depen­dency management” in foreign and security policy and greater resilience for the EU in the sense of de-risking can only be achieved through a communitised foreign policy. If the EU also wants to counter the US chal­lenge to multilateralism, the Europeans would be well advised to choose the path of hard balancing vis-à-vis the United States. The EU is seen as a multilateral or supranational project that must prove itself in times of crisis if it is to serve as a model for other regions. If it fails to do so, 2) a Euro­pean Security Council must be created outside the EU treaties – comprising at least Germany, France, Poland and the United Kingdom – and invite other states on an ad hoc basis according to regional and thematic priorities. Its main task will be to form international coalitions of the willing prepared to seek multilateral solu­tions based on shared values.

The EU will not be able to postpone the Europeanisation of the CFSP/CSDP for much longer, as it has done in recent years (see SWP Comment 19/2024). The discord that characterises the EU internally is likely to continue to manifest itself in fragmented external action, which Europe can no longer afford. For this reason, communitarisation and/or the creation of a European Security Council are important political solutions.