European Union’s Strategic Autonomy

It is hardly to understand, why the European Union (EU), an organisation of 27 member states on a single continent with close economic and cultural links, with a population of almost 450 million, does not have its own effective instrument for implementing security and defence policy. Its dependence on the USA in this respect has not given rise to much reflection so far. The general detente and relative state of security after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact corresponded to the European elite, recognising that Europe is basically free of external threats. This made it possible to allocate more funds in favour of social development programmes at the expense of security and defence. It was only Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine, internal integrity challenges, fading unipolar system and the uncontrolled influx of immigrants in the aftermath of the unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa that caused anxiety among the European establishment, as the lack of effective tools for counteracting the threats facing the EU’s borders was exposed. The full strategic autonomy in the security and defence domain should be the middle-term future goal (10 years). The essential objective is the ability to take decisions and implement them within the whole spectrum of the provisions of Article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty, including the mutual defence task so far delegated to NATO and taken out of the prerogatives of the EU administration. This fundamental change requires from national political elites to be prepared to accept and support a federal structure of the organization and centralization of the governance. The European Union’s strategic autonomy does not cross NATO, on the contrary. Its achievement should strengthen the North Atlantic Alliance. In the new format, the NATO EU pillar would be one of the NATO’s regional hubs, together with NATO North Africa, NATO Middle East and NATO Asia if this organization is developed in this way. Other NATO pillars are not excluded. The NATO EU hub would primarily be responsible for European Union’s security and defence as well as promotion of peace and development in its neighbourhood working with partners.