The Balkan wars of the 1990s showed how weak European governments were when they tried to act alone. That experience encouraged governments to forge a common EU foreign policy, so that they would act together in future crises. In 1999 governments agreed to set up an EU defence policy to support their common foreign policy. Since then, EU governments have made rapid progress in developing the defence policy. After a series of modest military missions the EU has taken over the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia from NATO, its most ambitious operation to date. It also successfully deployed in volatile Congo, and in Sudan in support of African Union’s mission.

In December 2003, EU leaders agreed on a ‘European security strategy’. This document spells out the main threats facing European security: terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts, failed states and organised crime. None of these challenges are purely military; nor can they be addressed by purely military means. But there is a real need for Europeans to think more creatively about what kind of defence capability they want. What sorts of missions do they envisage undertaking - and how do they expect their forces to operate in future? European governments need to make a searching assessment of the kinds of additional tasks they want their armies to perform, alongside traditional peacekeeping.

The EU also began to look into ways to introduce more efficiency in arms procurement and production across the continent. The European Defence Agency was set up to break down barriers to cross-border trade in military goods, and to harmonize the process of research, development and production of new weapons among EU member states. A consortium including the Centre for European Reform (CER) prepared a major study for the EDA on how to run a European defence equipment programme. The study, conducted jointly in a consortium with the Institut de relations internationals et stratégiques (IRIS) in Paris, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) in Berlin and the Insituto Affari internazionali (IAI) in Rome, provided the agency with guidelines and best practice for multinational programmes, drawing on the lessons from past programmes.