Memoranda of Understanding? Minilateral Defence Frameworks and Avoiding the Fragmentation of European Defence
- EU and strategic partners,
- EU strategy and foreign policy,
- Europe in the World,
- European defence / NATO,
Europe’s defence architecture is becoming increasingly complex precisely at the moment when greater coherence is most needed. The amount of new minilateral defence frameworks established and developed in the last decade has been truly staggering. A recent mapping exercise identified more than 160 defence arrangements among European Union Member States, the UK and Ukraine since 2014, covering operational, industrial and other forms of defence cooperation. The growing role of these arrangements has become one of the most significant developments in European defence cooperation of the past decade. Russia’s war against Ukraine, uncertainty surrounding the transatlantic security relationship, and different strategic views across the continent are the main reason these kinds of arrangements have been established in the first place. Yet for the EU, without an organizing principle and a way to maintain institutional relationships with these various formations, this proliferation risks creating further fragmentation within the wider European defence architecture, especially in the case of operational minilateral frameworks.
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