European Union

Warfare is shaped by geopolitical, societal, technological, economic and military trends:
Geopolitical: The multipolar relations between ever bigger political entities with overlapping spheres of influences are defined by surpise and uncertainty. Smaller political entities will be weaker and proxy wars more common in the future. Detterence will be reinterpreted, vulnerable states more prone to aquire nuclear weapons and international norms weakened. Megacities will be central battlefields that leave ground forces vulnerable.
Social: Warfare will shift to the internet, it will be uncontrollably ‘open-source’, live and shocking, with ever more spectacular terror. Armies will be more network-centred, waging more personalised wars and will have to find new ways to interact with democratic societies. Women in combat and the disappearance of world war veterans change the way people think about war.
Technological: Mankind becomes more powerful over time, with non-state actors possessing capabilities currently restricted to super-powers. It will struggle to outlaw technological advances and wage war without violence. The West will lose its technological superiority and will have even bigger problems in knowing how and what to research. Both inferior and highly developed armies will develop new ways of engaging the enemy. Artificial intelligence (AI) will mean that democratic armies have to balance the ‘human in the loop’ policy against effectiveness.
Economic: The economy of the opponent will be a bigger target than in the past, with commercial and dual-goods becoming more important, and the environment a more widely used weapon.
Military: Possible future military situations will be more diverse then ever. Western armies will be vulnerable to cheap weaponry. The idea that wars will be easy to win will make the world more dangerous.
Key uncertainties are China, the cyber-dimension, robotics, autonomous systems and artificial intelligence, paradigmatic breakthroughs such as quantum computing, general AI and anti-ballistic systems, nuclear detterence and nuclear bargaining. Ten key questions for policy-makers focus on strategic autonomy, adaptation, balancing reserves, R&D, cooperation and export, interventions, China, weakening norms, anticipation, communication and procurement.

This report is based on discussions in the CEPS Task Force on EU Reform. The group met four times between September 2016 and January 2017. Participants included members of the European Parliament, former members of the college of Commissioners, former members of the European Council and Council of Ministers, as well as leading scholars on EU politics and law. A list of members and their organisational affiliation appears in the Annex. Pieter de Gooijer, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom to the Netherlands to the EU, and Pawel Świeboda, Deputy Head of the European Political Strategy Centre of the European Commission acted as observers to the proceedings of the Task Force.
CEPS’ Task Force on EU reform has looked into constitutional issues and citizens' involvement in politics, migration and asylum, euro area economic governance, and trade policy. These are all areas where the added value of the Union's action is clear and where we still have unfinished business. We have tried to draw up a list of proposals for actions that are positive and can bring solutions where populist discourse cannot. Our recommendations are achievable, realistic, concrete, based on objective facts and figures, and part of a broader long-term approach. We do not shy away from considering possible treaty change, but focus first on what can be done quickly and easily, if there is a willingness to act.

The Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration (MEDAM) was established in 2016 to pursue two objectives: to conduct research to improve our understanding of the interrelated challenges facing the EU and its member states in the areas of asylum, migration, and mobility; and to engage European policy makers and civil society in a broad and open debate about comprehensive, implementable solutions to these challenges.
This 2018 MEDAM Assessment Report on Asylum and Migration Policies in Europe is the second in an annual series. The challenges European policymakers face may appear less urgent today than in 2015 or 2016 because fewer irregular immigrants are now arriving in the EU. But each of the main measures that are associated with reducing the number of irregular immigrants - the EU-Turkey agreement, the closure of the Western Balkans migration route, and cooperation with the Libyan coast guard and other problematic actors in Libya - has important shortcomings that call into question their long-term sustainability in their current form.
In this report, we analyze how these policy interventions may be further developed and which complementary measures are needed to create an effective framework of policies to protect refugees, respect the human rights of migrants, and reduce irregular immigration to the EU.
We begin by assessing immediate challenges to EU policies. We apply the notion of ‘flexible solidarity’ to provide guidance on how EU member states may effectively share responsibility for interconnected policies in different areas. We discuss possible responses to the challenges posed by irregular migration across the Mediterranean and explore ways in which EU member states can create more opportunities for legal labor migration from Africa to the EU.

The European Commission and the European Environment Agency (EEA) launched the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT) in 2012. Its aim is to provide a common European knowledge base to support the target audience of governmental organisations and those supporting them in developing and implementing climate change adaptation strategies and actions, complementary to adaptation platforms at other levels of governance. The need for such a platform was recognised in the 2013 EU strategy on adaptation to climate change or adaptation strategy, which is being evaluated by the European Commission in 2017-2018, as a key element of better informed decision-making that should be developed further. The objectives of Climate-ADAPT are: to facilitate the collection, sharing and use of information on climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, and build a consistent and updated knowledge base; to assist the effective uptake of the relevant knowledge by decision-makers; and to contribute to a greater level of coordination among sectors and institutional levels.
Climate-ADAPT is facing a twofold challenge. Firstly, stakeholder demands vary at each governance level related to the specific tasks of decision-makers and have evolved over time. Secondly, the wide range of EU and nationally funded projects, as well as practical experience of adaptation, have significantly enhanced the amount and diversity of adaptation knowledge in Europe to be shared. Furthermore, many other relevant European knowledge platforms have emerged, including those on climate services, biodiversity and ecosystem services, and disaster risk reduction.
This report provides an evaluation of the fulfilment of the Climate-ADAPT objectives. The evaluation was carried out by the EEA as a process evaluation with a focus on learning. It focuses on the three objectives
of the platform mentioned above. The lessons learned from the Climate-ADAPT evaluation may also be of use for other thematic platforms maintained by the EEA, such as those on biodiversity and water, and for climate change adaptation platforms at national and transnational levels.

This Report explores how EU civilian crisis management (CCM) has evolved over the past decade, showing how the concept and activity have been transformed by changes in the international security environment as well as in the EU’s institutional setting. Security challenges such as organised crime, illegal migration or terrorism have made the traditional divide between internal and external security increasingly irrelevant. New types of CCM actors have thus emerged, in the field of Justice and Home Affairs in particular, that have de facto embraced crisis management in response to new threats. This publication seeks to identify the challenges as well as the opportunities that these changes present for CCM, and examines inter alia how EU CCM actors and policies have adapted to the new environment and how they can best serve the Union’s strategic priorities as identified by the EU Global Strategy.

Two years after the EU formally launched its strategy for an Energy Union, this Report examines the energy challenges facing the different regions of Europe, investigating shared priorities and common projects, as well as barriers to integration and cooperation. A series of chapters devoted to distinct regions examines what role the Energy Union can play to help address their energy challenges, including those related to energy security and relations with external suppliers. The Report also looks at efforts to push forward with the construction of the Energy Union via regional initiatives, including some that reach beyond the borders of the EU. Such initiatives have shown how progress on all five pillars of the Energy Union is important for the energy security of the EU and how progress need not be uniform across Europe. Notably, the deepening and interconnection of energy markets – nationally, regionally, within the EU, and beyond its borders – are central to this process

As well as introducing new decisions and actions in the field of security and defence, the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) stresses the imperative to build resilience in the EU neighbouring countries and surrounding regions.
As the EUGS approaches its first anniversary, and shortly before the release of a Joint Communication on resilience by the EEAS and the Commission, this volume, the second in the EUISS post-EUGS series, seeks to shed more light on the different definitions of the concept and how these may be applied in specific functional and geographic areas. It aims to clarify not only the meaning of the term but also its policy implications in the wider security context, showing how resilience needs be understood as a dynamic process involving a number of EU policies, external partners and local players.

Preventive diplomacy, or the resolution of disputes by peaceful means, has been one of the foundations of the EU’s foreign and security policy in Asia and beyond and stands as an expression of a rule-based international order. Moreover, in its key strategic documents, including the recently released Global Strategy, the EU has highlighted the importance of preventive diplomacy, as reflected in the proposed ‘integrated approach’ to conflicts and crises.
This Report, which draws on the main presentations made during the 2016 CSCAP EU Committee meeting devoted to this topic, examines the role of the EU as a preventive diplomacy actor and explores how in pursuing this strategy it can contribute positively to security in the Indo-Pacific region.

Permanent Structured Cooperation (PeSCo), the so-called ‘sleeping beauty’ of EU defence, is awake. Still barely predictable only a year ago, PeSCo is an ambitious, binding and inclusive legal framework aimed at incentivising defence cooperation among member states. PeSCo is based on binding commitments between member states that could promote increased defence spending, improve force commitments for EU operations and stimulate European defence equipment programmes. In addition to the regular assessment of these commitments, PeSCo will also house a number of concrete projects designed to improve the effectiveness of EU military operations and to sustain European capability development. Taken together, these elements are designed to potentially shape national mindsets and practices in defence through a structured framework at the EU level.
Elaborating on the likely form and extent of PeSCo, this Chaillot Paper not only sketches out the historical metamorphosis of PeSCo but it also looks more specifically at how it could change the operational and capability development dynamics of EU defence cooperation. The paper is not primarily occupied with questions about its finalité politique, but it is rather an analytical guide to assist experts and lay readers alike navigate the major operational and capability issues at stake.

This Chaillot Paper contextualises the dilemmas facing EU policymakers as Europe experienced an unprecedented influx of migrants and refugees in 2015-2016. Analysing and comparing the differing perspectives of external experts and internal practitioners, it examines how the EU’s enlargement, neighbourhood and development policies evolved in response to the migration crisis.
The paper identifies nine important shifts in European foreign policy that took place during the crisis, offering an explanation of why each occurred.