European Preference, Strategic Autonomy and the European Defence Fund

It was the aim of this paper to ask three authors from different backgrounds how they saw the connections between two notions, strategic autonomy and European preference, and the European Defence Fund (EDF), the European Commission initiative currently submitted to the European Council and the European Parliament for approval. These three authors were chosen for their diverse origins. The first of them, Vincenzo Camporini, vice-president of the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), was successively Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force and of the Italian Defence General Staff. He expresses the military man’s point of view. The second, Dick Zandee, is Senior Research Fellow at the Dutch Clingendael Institute. Lastly, Keith Hartley is a British economist at the university of York who has worked for many years on the defence industry.

It would inevitably be reductive to synthesize their arguments: their viewpoints are also those of individuals, not of representatives of institutions. And yet a number of general lines of argument emerge. Though Vincenzo Camporini stresses that Europeans’ efforts should contribute to strengthening the European pillar of NATO and that the European Union will still have to depend on some NATO resources going forward, he nonetheless takes the view that there is a recurrent capability shortfall on the Europeans’ part and that a certain level of strategic autonomy is required to enable constructive dialogue to take place within the alliance. For that reason, Europeans must make their own contributions, including with regard to the most demanding scenarios…