Abstract
This article analyses how crises may open policy windows which, when properly seized by policy entrepreneurs, made European defence policy a priority on the EU’s agenda. The article compares two periods which can be considered as critical junctures for European defence: the periods of its birth in 1998–1999, and its relaunch in 2016–2019. The analysis is based on the Multiple Stream Framework (msf) and considers European defence as a public policy shaped by policy actors. More precisely, the main hypothesis is that in both contexts policy actors from France and Germany took advantage of focusing events – the Kosovo War in 1998–1999, and Brexit extended by the election of Trump introducing turmoil within the transatlantic partnership in 2016–2019 – to advocate a policy solution to answer security challenges faced by the EU. The article also assesses how British policy actors played decisive yet inverse roles in both contexts. The first part of the article explains how the msf is used and why it is a stimulating agenda to study European defence policy. The second part of the article analyses the policy entrepreneurs taking advantage of the policy windows opened in both cases, and how they coupled the three streams underlying European defence by exploiting the British variable. The last part of the article focuses on the means used by the policy entrepreneurs to make it a policy priority on the European policy agenda in both the late 1990s and 2016–2019.
Introduction 1
In a world where multilateralism is increasingly challenged, the European Union (EU) has been seeking more strategic autonomy for several years. However, despite the ever-intensifying security challenges they face, EU member states seem to have lost interest in the EU’s defence policy in the last decade. The current security challenges faced by the EU seem to be driving an enhanced Common Security and Defence Policy (csdp). More precisely, the referendum on Brexit held in the United Kingdom in June 2016 opened an unexpected policy window to push this topic forward again. On 15 December 2016 the European Council encouraged Europeans to ‘take greater responsibility for their security’. 2 This challenging security environment, which includes Brexit, turmoil in transatlantic relations since the election of Donald Trump, and global insecurity in EU’s neighbourhood, brings back memories of the 1990s when the EU faced security challenges created by the Balkan wars.
This article is based on a clear argument: it shows that crises tend to fuel European defence policy when they are appropriately framed as a policy window by governmental policy actors. These actors take advantage of crisis to push forward existing ideas about European defence and succeed in bringing them to the top of the EU’s agenda. While the argument regarding progress in European defence between crises is not entirely new, 3 the originality of the present article lies in the fact that it relies on the Multiple Stream Framework (msf) to frame the crisis as a policy window according to John Kingdon’s model, 4 and to analyse how this window is kept open by specific policy entrepreneurs in order to push through a policy solution they negotiated much earlier. This article explores how they manage to couple the three independent streams underlying European defence.
We mainly rely on three elements from the msf: the concepts of policy window, policy entrepreneurs and the coupling of the streams underlying the policy process (in this case European defence policy). 5 In order to better understand how crises open policy windows, the article compares two periods that can be considered critical junctures for European defence: the periods during which European Defence was born, in 1998–1999, and its rebirth 2016–2019. Regarding the latter, a growing body of literature focuses on strategic aspects and does not consider European defence policy as a specific public policy. 6 This article proposes to analyse the birth and rebirth of European defence as a specific public policy shaped by its main actors. More precisely, our hypothesis is that in both contexts, policy (governmental) actors from France and Germany took advantage of focusing events – the Kosovo War in 1998–1999, and Brexit, exacerbated by the election of Trump in 2016–2019, to push forward policy solutions in the area of European defence. 7 These policy solutions need to suit their strategic interests and ideas negotiated prior to the focusing events. In both cases the crisis (which will be defined in the first section) made it obvious that the EU had no other choice than to become a more substantial security actor in international relations.
The two cases chosen here are very different: one is a crisis external to the EU (Kosovo) that had international security consequences, and the other (Brexit) is an internal EU crisis. Yet these two cases have common implications for European defence: its becoming a European policy priority. Both cases also put pressure on the EU’s ability to behave as an international security and diplomatic actor. This explains why these two cases were chosen, even though they are different in nature.
To further test this hypothesis, the article also assesses the following counter-hypothesis: British policy actors played a decisive role in both contexts. British policy actors can be analysed as an independent variable in both cases: 8 in the birth of European defence policy they played a crucial role as key players in bringing it into existence, whereas in the rebirth of European defence policy their marginalisation due to Brexit acted as a driver to relaunch many pending European defence projects.
The article is based on the Multiple Stream Framework (msf), to analyse how French and German policy actors used the window of opportunity, created by a critical event in both contexts, to achieve the coupling of the different policy streams underlying European defence policy with the necessary presence of British policy actors in one situation, and thanks to their marginalisation in the other. This analytical model is original, as it has not yet been used thoroughly to study European defence as public policy. 9 The concept of policy window is used to explain change in both cases. 10 A policy window is defined as an “opportunity for advocates of proposals to push their pet solutions, or to push attention to their special problems.” 11
Why did European defence become a policy priority on the European agenda in 1998–1999 and from 2016 on? According to Kingdon’s msf, the policy process is composed of three independent streams: a problem stream, a policy stream, and a politics stream. These streams may occasionally converge (Kingdon uses the concept of coupling) when a policy window appears and is used correctly by policy actors who are in a position to propose a viable policy solution. Here the article raises the following questions: how are the focusing events, the Kosovo crisis and Brexit, framed to keep the policy window open? What kind of actors coupled the streams in European defence and with what means? The article focuses on the French and German policy entrepreneurs by studying how they managed to keep the window open in both cases. 12 The data used to answer these research questions is based on official declarations made by French, German, European and a few British political actors (heads of state and government, ministers, EU officials), official EU documents, press articles, expert analysis, and over 100 qualitative interviews held in 2004–2008 and 2016–2018 in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels.
Methodologically, we mainly rely on content and discourse analysis from a comparative perspective and our analysis focuses on two periods: 1998–1999 and June 2016-December 2019. 13 We will demonstrate that European defence became a policy priority at the European level in these periods thanks to the use of focusing events perceived as policy windows by French and German governmental entrepreneurs. The first part of the article explains how we rely on the msf and why it is an original contribution to the study of European defence policy. The second part of the article analyses the policy entrepreneurs taking advantage of the policy windows opened in both cases, and how they coupled the three streams underlying European defence by exploiting the British variable. The last part of the article focuses on the means used by the policy entrepreneurs to couple the streams and make defence a policy priority on the European policy agenda in both the late 1990s and 2016–2019.
Using the msf to Analyse European Defence Policy: A Stimulating Agenda
The msf, originally developed by Kingdon, 14 has been used to analyse public policies not only at the national level but also the EU and global levels, 15 and in comparative policy analysis. 16 It has been used less frequently to analyse and explain change in foreign policy 17 and this is even more so in the case of defence policy. 18
Linking External Issues and Policy Processes: An Original Way of Explaining European Defence Policy
The msf offers an interesting analytical tool for linking foreign policy issues and the domestic level of public policy, as “externally generated problems or solutions still need to be domestically interpreted. Policy entrepreneurs play a major part in coupling,” 19 as we intend to demonstrate. Although the msf was first developed to study American public policy, since the 1990s many authors have demonstrated the analytic usefulness of this model for analysing European public policies. 20 The msf is therefore used here as an analytical model to see where further research is of added-value. As stated earlier, a public policy relies on three streams flowing independently, and originates when these streams are coupled.
The problem stream consists of the various public problems and policy issues, which need to be framed as policy problems to access the policy agenda. The policy stream designates the entrepreneurs of policy solutions who frame the policy issues in a ‘primeval soup’ composed of the ideas discussed by policy communities (experts and policy actors) to propose solutions to policy problems. 21 The politics stream refers to the political dimension of public policy as affected by elections, changes in government, national moods, etc.
According to this model, an idea emerges on the policy agenda (national or European) when a policy window opens, which can be explained by the coupling of the three streams that normally operate independently. Here, the conceptual added-value of the msf is the policy window, as it helps to explain change in public policy.
At critical moments, the three streams can be coupled by policy entrepreneurs (who are actors located in strategic positions within a public policy area), which enhances the likelihood that a specific policy solution will be adopted and implemented. 22 A policy window can open according to a predictable path (change in power, institutional processes), or it can be unpredictable, when it is opened following a crisis, which can be defined simply as an important change in the policy context leading actors to either consider new solutions for a specific policy issue or to reframe potential solutions. 23 In the context of European integration a crisis can also be defined as a ‘decision-making situation with a manifest threat and a perceived probability of disintegration.’ 24
In line with these definitions, we consider the crises in both cases – the Kosovo War in 1998–1999 and the outcome of the British referendum on Brexit, exacerbated by the uncertainty in transatlantic relations since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 – to be crises because they impelled the EU to face the threat of destabilisation, and to demonstrate its credibility in international security. In both cases, these events can be considered crises that do not jeopardise the existence of the integration process, but which seriously question the EU’s ability to tackle strategic challenges. 25
Our hypothesis is that, in both cases, the policy window has been seized by policy entrepreneurs placed in strategic positions in some countries (here we focus on France, Germany and partly the UK), and EU institutions, to couple the streams and make European defence a priority on the European policy agenda. The British policy actors played a role as a key variable in both cases – actors who were indispensable in launching European defence in 1998–1999, and who as a constraining variable have been marginalised by Brexit since 2016.
Both situations being compared here have been framed as crises by many European political leaders, which is why we have chosen to compare them, even though they are different in nature. 26 Both critical situations raise issues concerning European defence policy and the strategic capacity of the EU to tackle security issues. Both act as focusing events or, to use Kingdon’s words, as the ‘big wave’ surfers [French and German policy entrepreneurs] had been waiting for concerning European defence. 27 As Kingdon puts it, the problems are not “self-evident […] they need a little push […]. That push is sometimes provided by a focusing event like a crisis or disaster that comes along to call attention to the problem.” 28 The msf thus enables us to focus on the coupling moment, and to identify and analyse which actors achieved the coupling, and how they did it by relying on a favourable mood, symbolic action, and rhetoric. It also helps us to explore the weight of the British variable, and to understand what kind of policy actors played a decisive role in the first case and why they only play a role by default in the second case. By using the msf, the article focuses on the agenda-setting part of the process through the coupling of the three streams, and not on the durability of the change introduced in European defence policy. Through comparison, we demonstrate how the French and German governmental actors coupled the three policy streams by taking advantage of the window opened by both contexts. Choosing to use the case of French-German entrepreneurship is justified by France and Germany’s historical commitment to military cooperation in Europe. 29 This does not mean that we ignore or minimise the role played by the other European states, without the support of which – though it was sometimes reluctant or sceptical – European defence could not have seen the light of day. 30 The diachronic comparison of both cases shows a case of convergence, which means a rapid re-birth of old ideas as we show in the following sections. 31
In the final section, this article demonstrates how this policy work has been backed by rather a good level of social acceptability (what we call a favourable mood) and how political symbols have been used to legitimise this entrepreneurship.
Defining the Three Streams in European Defence Policy
Before conducting any further analysis, we need to define the three streams underlying European defence policy. The first stream is the problem stream, which refers to the framing of the problem as one that should be tackled by public authorities and in this case specifically at the European level. With regard to European defence, the problem in question was the EU’s insufficient strategic autonomy to cope with the security threats surrounding it. Therefore a European policy solution had to be pushed forward to increase the EU’s strategic autonomy. Not only did this give rise to many expert publications on this topic at the end of the 1990s, and since 2016, but political negotiations were ongoing between some political leaders – mainly French and German political leaders and policy actors – for many months before the crises emerged. 32
This first, problem stream, has been fuelled by the end of the Cold War and the Balkan crisis, during which the EU was unable to act and prevent a crisis in its direct neighbourhood. This generated intense reflection, not only among experts in think tanks in the three biggest European military powers (France, Germany and the UK), but also in the highest political circles of ministries and among heads of state and their close counsellors. As regards the birth of European defence policy in the late 1990s, the main problem appears to have been the inability to move beyond political symbols generated by the French-German military cooperation, such as the French-German Brigade or the Eurocorps. In December 1998, the sudden change in British policy actors’ strategic preferences at the highest level (mainly at the Prime Ministerial level and that of the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and Defence) made it possible to give substance to this problem stream. In the second case, French and German policy actors relied on political negotiations and symbols – as we show below – to frame the EU’s lack of strategic autonomy as a policy problem and get this on the EU agenda as a policy priority. 33
The second stream is the policy stream, pertaining to the potential policy solutions that originate from communities of policy makers and experts. For European defence, experts from think tanks, but also heads of state, governments, foreign and defence ministers (and obviously their counsellors) in France, Germany and Great Britain in one case, and in France and Germany in the second case, argued for the need for a qualitative change in European defence policy, to move in the direction of greater European strategic autonomy. 34 More precisely, the policy solutions proposed were based on both financial pragmatism and a search for leadership in the European integration process, to solve the problem of the EU’s lack of efficiency in international security. In the first case, the policy solution negotiated 35 consisted of creating a European capacity autonomous from nato in matters of security and defence, as stated in the Saint-Malo Declaration signed by Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair on December 4, 1998. This led to the official birth of European defence policy (esdp) at the European summit in Cologne in June 1999, with Germany quickly coming to support the Saint-Malo agreement. 36 Here we challenge the commonly held view that the outcome of the St Malo summit was a pure French-British product: even though the German political actors where not present at the St-Malo summit, French and German political entrepreneurs had indeed negotiated solutions concerning European defence since the negotiations around the Maastricht Treaty, which made it easy for the German government to rapidly endorse the results of St-Malo, and launch the European Defence and Security Policy in June 1999 under the German Presidency of the EU.
In the second case, the policy solutions mostly rely on the creation of concrete tools to give substance to the EU’s strategic autonomy. What is striking is that in both cases the policy stream containing solutions regarding European defence operates in a context of transatlantic tensions, 37 and of a strategic agreement to disagree on the future of European security between Europe’s two military powers: France and Great Britain. 38
The last stream is the politics stream, which refers to factors such as changes in government, fluctuations in public opinion, etc. What is notable in both cases is that changes in the domestic political environment, but also the support of expert discourse and public opinion, created a supportive mood that helped push the policy solution towards more European strategic autonomy. More precisely, regarding the birth of European defence, what made it possible to gain British approval (especially the Saint-Malo agreement in 1998) for letting the EU deal with defence – as had been negotiated by French and German governmental actors since the Maastricht Treaty in 1990 – was the Labour party coming into government under Prime Minister Tony Blair in May 1997. Empirical studies have indeed shown that Blair himself imposed European defence as a topic before policy actors from the MoD and the Foreign Office managed to agree on the issue. 39 Therefore, political alternance played a crucial role in the birth of European defence. In the second case, the election of Emmanuel Macron as French President in May 2017 also played an important role, as he immediately considered both European strategic autonomy and the relaunch of a European defence priorities and a duty that fell to the French-German partnership. 40
These three streams normally flow independently of each other until circumstances lead to their ‘coupling’. Phenomena such as ‘crises’ or ‘focusing events’ (here the Kosovo War, on the one hand, and Brexit on the other hand) make the problem manifest, which means that there is the political will to address the issue and find solutions that were previously not high on the political agenda. 41 A crisis can be defined as a situation that threatens the equilibrium (even if it is often sub-optimal) reached in a public policy area, and a focusing event is an event that draws attention to this crisis. As Cairney and Zahariadis put it, ‘The greater the perceived magnitude of the effects [of the focusing event], the higher on the agenda an issue is likely to be.’ 42 A focusing event is, in other words, an event that surely cannot go unnoticed by actors in positions of power. This was the case here with European strategic autonomy, both during the Kosovo War and after Brexit (and with the turmoil within transatlantic relations since Trump’s election in the fall of 2016).
Thus in the next section we analyse how policy entrepreneurs from France and Germany, necessarily backed by the UK in the case of the birth of European defence policy, and France and Germany in the case of its rebirth, coupled these streams. 43 How did they keep the window open to bring European defence to the top of the European policy agenda?
Coupling the Streams of European Defence: How French and German Policy Actors Exploited the British Variable
The msf assumes that the coupling of the three streams happens during a policy window when certain policymakers are in power. With regard to the birth and relaunch of European defence policy in 1998–1999 and in 2016–2019, three major elements relating to the policymakers in power stand out.
First, the heads of state in France and Germany in 1998–1999 (President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder) and 2016–2019 (President Hollande until May 2017 and President Macron from May 2017, and Chancellor Merkel) are European-minded leaders. In both cases, their close policy advisers, 44 and their ministers for Foreign Affairs and defence share a common European orientation and an ambition to push forward European actorness in international security. The politics stream in both cases converged easily with the policy stream. It is also important to look at the British variable, as in the first case the politics stream also converges as we show below, whereas in the second case the politics stream clearly moves in the opposite direction under Theresa May in June 2016 and even more so under Boris Johnson from July 2019 on.
List of the French and German policy actors involved in the birth and rebirth of European defence in 1998–1999 and in 2016–2019.
Second, these actors playing the role of policy entrepreneurs were backed by some of the key policy players in Brussels, which can be identified as part of the policy stream in the case of European defence policy. 45 The first appointed High Representative, Javier Solana, strongly favoured the idea of autonomous European defence capacity in 1998–1999. As regards the period between 2016 and 2019, policy players such as Federica Mogherini (and now Josep Borrell, since December 2019), High Representative and Vice President of the European Commission, and Jean-Claude Junker, President of the European Commission, backed the French-German proposals to relaunch European defence. 46
Third, in both cases American administrations (the Clinton administration in 1998–1999 and the Trump administration in 2017–2019) emphasised that European countries should be more committed to their own security and tended to urge Europeans to shoulder a larger proportion of the financial burden of European security.
Therefore, in both cases the window opened by the Kosovo War (1998–1999) and Brexit, extended by transatlantic turmoil (2016–2020), has been used to rapidly push forward initiatives on European Defence. As Kingdon puts it, the policy entrepreneurs managed to ‘strike when the iron was hot’. 47 The overlap between the crisis context in both cases and the policymakers who were then in power in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and London (positively in the first case, negatively in the second case) can be regarded as a critical factor. 48 This pushes us to examine the policy entrepreneurs involved in the coupling of the streams.
Policy entrepreneurs can be defined as individuals or corporate actors that attempt to couple the three independent streams to push forward their proposals. The closer they are to policymakers, the more successful they are likely to be. 49 With regard to European defence policy, it is interesting to note that policy entrepreneurs are the main actors driving defence policy at the national level (chiefs of the executive, ministers of Foreign Affairs and defence) as are EU figures involved in csdp, such as the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, the president of the EU Council Donald Tusk, and the European Commission (in the case of the European Defence Fund) with Jean-Claude Juncker taking a strong position on the need for European defence.
Policy Window and Entrepreneurship in the Birth of European Defence Policy
European defence started to become an important concern for French and German governmental actors in the traumatic context of the Bosnia War, which confronted Europeans with the harsh reality that without Washington, they were unable to act to maintain their security. 50 This led small circles of actors at the top of state administrations, mostly French-German at first, to act as a transnational advocacy coalition. 51 This advocacy coalition pushed the question of building military instruments for the EU onto the European political agenda. The idea that European foreign policy needs military instruments is not very old; the failure of the European Defence Community in 1954 eliminated defence matters from the European integration process for over 40 years. French President Mitterrand, German Chancellor Kohl and their closest counsellors (their personal diplomatic counsellors as much as ministers of defence and foreign affairs) relied on their institutionalised bilateral military cooperation as a shared foundation for negotiating propositions aimed at introducing defence as a priority in the integration process. They first resuscitated the unused weu (1994) as a forum where European ministers could discuss defence matters outside of the nato framework, which was viewed with hostility by London. 52 At Maastricht, under strong French-German leadership by Mitterrand and Kohl, 53 European member states dedicated an entire section of the Treaty to European Common Foreign and Security Policy (Title V), including ‘the definition in the long run of a common defence policy, which could lead, in a suitable time, to a common defence’. 54 Indeed, this has fuelled the policy stream of policy proposals since 1990. But to understand how French and German policy actors could play the role of policy entrepreneurs in the birth of European defence, the British variable needs to be examined. Indeed, the French-German proposals regarding European defence could hardly be more than symbolic (see for example the Eurocorps, created in 1992), as Germany undertook important reforms of the Bundeswehr in 1998, had a very low defence budget, and was not in position to be the key player France had expected. 55 As many interviewees told us, while European defence outside nato was seen with much enthusiasm by policy actors in Berlin, the German military establishment remained clearly nato-oriented and suspicious. 56 Therefore, European defence policy needed the push that came from London, the other military power in Europe, to materialise concretely. The politics stream in the UK had become favourable with the election of Tony Blair in 1997, even though both his Ministers, Robin Cook at Defence, and George Robertson at the Foreign Office, were not immediately converted to believing in an autonomous European defence capacity. As the literature shows, Blair himself played the role of policy entrepreneur at the French-British summit in Saint-Malo in December 1998. 57 London made a U-turn by supporting the idea of an autonomous European defence capacity in which nato is not engaged, thereby recognising for the first time the legitimacy of the EU developing a defence policy of its own. 58 The focusing event that made this surprising change in the British position towards European defence possible was the outbreak of war in Kosovo in February 1998: 59 it quickly, and vividly, demonstrated the EU’s inability to manage a conflict directly on its borders, and put transatlantic solidarity to the test. The severity of the Kosovo crisis helped the French, British and soon German governmental actors (mainly the heads of state themselves, their diplomatic counsellors and their ministers of defence and foreign affairs) to couple the streams defined above and put European defence on the EU agenda. After Blair agreed to cross the ‘European Defence Rubicon’, 60 French and German policy entrepreneurs had no difficulty Europeanising the policy proposal and officially launching European defence policy (esdp) 61 – which they had been talking about for almost a decade – at the European summit in Cologne in June 1999. The backing of High Representative Solana, but also getting partner countries like Italy and Spain on board played a crucial role there too, of course. 62 The Kosovo crisis led to a qualitative policy change in European defence and British policy actors at the highest level played a crucial yet unexpected role in this change.
Coupling the Streams in the Brexit Era: A Leadership Role for French and German Governmental Entrepreneurs
The parallel with the European defence policy situation in 2016–2019 is interesting, as the Brexit referendum led to an important qualitative change in European defence. 63 In this case, the policy entrepreneurs managed to couple the three independent streams underlying European defence by proposing several French-German initiatives between June 2016 and the summer of 2017. Their policy solutions kept focusing on the idea of developing the EU’s strategic autonomy by building on two technical areas: defence budgets and capabilities. The policy entrepreneurs in both capitals began, in June 2016, to present the marginalisation of the United Kingdom as a lever for developing European defence further, whereas the UK was presented by both French and German policy entrepreneurs as the necessary partner for bringing European defence to life in 1998–1999. Here the British variable plays the opposite role: it is the marginalisation of the veto player that enables European defence to re-emerge on the European agenda thanks to policy entrepreneurship deployed in Paris and Berlin. 64 The so-called ‘Munich consensus’ that gave rise to the German ‘2014 Review’ on Foreign Policy and Security introduced a shift in Germany’s position and helped push forward the idea of European strategic autonomy that had been so important for France for many years. 65 Several joint letters and bilateral initiatives were published by French and German ministers of Foreign Affairs, 66 and Defence, 67 and were backed at the European level by High Representative Mogherini and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker. 68
These policy actors, in Paris and Berlin, 69 proposed solutions that had already been negotiated in a bilateral or multilateral format over the previous decade but had been vetoed by London, such as the creation of a European military capability of command, 70 a European Defence Fund or the effective use of pesco, and managed to bring them to the European negotiation table without having to fear a British veto. 71 As Boin and t’Hart underline, in times of crisis it is important for leaders to show they have a plan, which the French and German governmental actors did in 2016–2019, to tackle the situation and prepare for the future. 72 For instance, the idea of a European military command structure finally found its way to the European level as the European Council established a permanent Military Planning and Conduct Capability (mpcc) for non-executive missions in June 2017, which should be seen as a first meaningful step toward a future permanent EU command structure in Brussels. 73 This example shows the successful coupling of the streams thanks to the policy entrepreneurship of French and German governmental actors who took advantage of the policy window opened by Brexit. 74
Although none of the ideas pushed forward by the French and German policy entrepreneurs were completely new (like a sort of primeval soup, in Kingdon’s words), the context created by the referendum on Brexit shed new light on the possibility of bringing them to life. Other examples followed a similar pattern: both pesco and the European Defence Fund, for instance, were advocated at first by French and German policy actors backed at the European level by policy actors in the Council and the Commission and were put on the European agenda and adopted by the European Council. 75 Therefore, the French-German entrepreneurship managed to create the minimal degree of European consensus needed to relaunch European defence by taking advantage of the marginalisation of the British veto player. The Europeanisation of many of the solutions they proposed, and the new focus on European defence in the EU, shows that they managed to couple the three streams of problems, policy, and politics in 2016–2019. They received strong backing from some key EU players, such as High Representative Mogherini during her full mandate and her successor Josep Borrel during the last Munich Security conference in February 2020, as well as the former President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Junker. 76
Comparing the two cases shows that the UK plays an important but opposite role in both. If London made European defence possible in 1998–1999 by at least accepting to participate in the project under a Labour mandate, the political change in the UK and the empowerment of a Conservative government in 2016–2019 made the removal of London an opportunity for the rebirth of European defence.
After having shown which actors coupled the streams in both 1998–1999 and 2016–2019, it is important to examine the means used to legitimise this coupling. In both contexts, the policy actors relied not only on a favourable mood but also on symbolic action to give substance to the policy solutions they advocated.
Coupling the Solution Stream with the Two Other Streams: Exploiting the Mood, and Symbolic Action in European Defence Policy
If an idea or a policy solution manages to make it to the policy agenda, it means that it not only meets the technical feasibility criteria but also that this policy solution is socially accepted because it is cognitively congruent with the dominant values and trends within the community of experts working on the policy area, as well as the dominant public opinion. 77 This was the case with the birth of European defence in 1998–1999, and its relaunch in 2016–2019. The coupling of the streams has not only been backed and fuelled by experts’ narratives and public opinion support setting up a favourable mood, but also frequently relied on symbolic action and rhetoric.
A Favourable Mood for the Birth, and Subsequent Rebirth, of European Defence Policy
In both 1998–1999 and 2016–2019, bilateral academic and expert initiatives like joint seminars, symposia, or colloquia on how France and Germany could act as lynchpins for European defence flowed freely. 78 Many interviewees told us that they met with experts regularly and that their analyses were read in the highest governmental offices.
Another element that plays an important role in the success of a policy solution advocated during a policy window is public opinion on the problem and the solution proposed by policy entrepreneurs. As Kingdon states: ‘When a window opens because a problem is pressing, the alternative generated as solutions to the problem fare better if they also meet the tests of political acceptability.’ 79 In the case of European defence, the idea of a more substantial European defence policy and the aim of more strategic autonomy for the EU benefits from a rather supportive mood both in France and Germany. 80 The picture is much more mixed in the UK.
In a Eurobarometer survey conducted in 1991, 81 one question was dedicated to European defence: 61% of respondents favoured a European intervention capacity (EB35). 82 In October 1991, 42% of respondents judged the role of the European Community in the Balkans to have been ineffective (EB 36). 83 In the context of the Kosovo War, 68% of respondents supported common decision-making in European foreign policy in 1999 (EB 51). 84 Furthermore, 52% of German respondents and 49% of French respondents also tended to support the idea of a European military capacity, versus only 38% in the UK. 85
Similar levels of support appear in 2016–2019. Primarily, this support was important among policy actors, such as MPs in Paris and Berlin. A survey conducted between April and July 2016 among French and German members of Parliament shows that the strongest consensus-prone European policy is European defence policy, whereas topics with a stronger national economic dimension, such as flexibility in the labour market, remain controversial. 86 The support for a common European defence policy among European citizens came close to 75% in April 2017(EB 461). 87 This public support is particularly strong among French (77%) and even more so German (84%) citizens. 88 Even the topic, “European army”, raised in national polls in France and Germany, was mostly positively seen in both countries, even though differences appear in the level of support. In Germany a poll carried out in September 2016 on this topic shows a narrow majority of respondents (54%) supporting the idea. 89 In France, a poll showed a support of 62% of the respondents in March 2019. 90
In contrast, as far as British public opinion is concerned, it is striking to witness a disconnect between the respondents’ opinions (67% were in favour of a European defence policy) and a part of the British political elite that was very sceptical on the issue. Yet European defence seems to be one of the European policies where cooperation between the EU and the UK as a post-Brexit state offers interesting potential. 91 This shows that the policy windows opened by focusing events in both contexts has benefited from a congruent mood that has increased the acceptability of the solutions advocated by policy entrepreneurs not only in their own countries but also in the EU globally. 92
To emphasise the relevance/importance of their solution on the question of European defence, the policy entrepreneurs also used symbolic action and rhetoric to give meaning to their policy proposals. 93
Symbolic Action in European Defence Policy: Framing a Strategic Solution for the EU
As several interviewees confirmed, foreign and defence policy needs symbols to acquire political substance. This is particularly true for French-German military cooperation, which regularly relies on historical and political symbolism. 94 In both cases, the policy entrepreneurs identified above relied on symbolic action. Pushing forward a policy solution also involves working with rhetoric, and symbolism aimed at maximising the effects of the policy window to give meaning to the solution. 95 It is about persuading the public that the chosen solution is appropriate. 96 As the academic literature shows, problems defined as losses tend to be taken more seriously. 97 In both cases, policy entrepreneurs (first and foremost heads of state and governments) labelled the focusing events (the war in Kosovo, the outcome of the referendum on Brexit) as a crisis and a test case for the EU. The attention that is paid to a specific policy issue is also heavily influenced by symbols that have a cognitive and affective function. Symbols not only create meaning but also help policy entrepreneurs to generate favour for a preferred policy solution. 98 Symbolism in not new in the French-German partnership and has even become part of the policy repertoire. 99 The symbol of the ‘community of destiny’ has been used in many bilateral initiatives in both the late 1990s and 2016–2019. The aim was to legitimise the French-German leadership in European defence, as was the case during the first attempts made by Mitterrand and Kohl in the 1990s. 100
Two types of symbols have been used by French-German policy entrepreneurs in both contexts to legitimise the policy solution they promote: historical and political symbols. Historical are frequently used in foreign and defence policy. One of the most important political symbols in that matter was the joint decision taken by President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl to have the Eurocorps troops parade on the Champs-Elysées during the 14 July 1994 military parade to celebrate French National Day. The aim was clearly to transcend memories of the past by having French and German soldiers parade side-by-side. Another interesting symbol was the historical analogies used by President Chirac to define the situation in Kosovo: he drew a parallel with the 1938 Munich agreements to urge his fellow European heads of state to act. 101 If a crisis does not necessarily exert a constraining effect on the political agenda, it can be framed as an opportunity to introduce change through the rhetorical function of historical analogies. 102
The same use of historical analogies is visible in 2016–2019. In November 2018 President Macron drew parallels between the current situation in Europe with the political situation in Europe in the 1930s. He also called for the creation of a European army in the wake of the 100th anniversary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918. Similarly, both President Chirac in June 2000 and President Macron in November 2018 were invited to speak before the German Parliament as a symbol of the strength of the French-German partnership in Europe, and both addressed the issue of European defence as a core project for European integration. The issue here is a classic case of re-legitimising the French-German policy entrepreneurship in European defence. This also applies to the speech made by Chancellor Merkel before the European Parliament in November 2018 to support the French President’s plea for a European army; the European army is to be seen much more as a symbol of European identity in defence matters than as an operational project. 103 The aim of this policy symbol is to manifest French-German leadership in European defence, even though both countries’ political elites tend to have slightly different views of European defence. 104
The second type of symbol used by policy entrepreneurs is symbolic language. The symbols used to frame the crisis aimed to exploit directly the crisis situation for the benefit of policy entrepreneurs. 105 For instance, both President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder framed the war in Kosovo as a test case for European foreign and security policy. Under the German presidency of the EU, they both convened an extraordinary informal meeting in Paris in February 1999 to talk to their European counterparts about their project regarding the development of a European military capacity. 106 The symbolic idea behind the meeting was to show that there was strong French-German advocacy to push the project, as its principle had finally been accepted by Prime Minister Blair in December 1998 in Saint-Malo. Concerning Brexit, in June 2016, President Hollande framed Brexit as a ‘painful test for Europe ‘and Chancellor Merkel talked about a ‘watershed for Europe’.
The aim of this symbolic language is to legitimise French-German leadership in European defence. In his speech on Europe at the Sorbonne University in September 2017, President Macron used emphatic terms to stress the historical legacy of French-German reconciliation in European integration and the will to act hand-in-hand with Germany to make the EU sovereign in the world, especially by developing ‘an autonomous military capability for Europe complementary to nato’. 107 This choice of words is interesting, as it is the same wording as that found in the Saint-Malo agreement in 1998, which paved the way for the birth of csdp. Likewise, the Charlemagne Prize, awarded to the French President in May 2018, 108 or the launch of the Aachen Treaty (a French-German cooperation and integration treaty) on 22 January 2019, are further symbols meant to create legitimacy and to act as a motor in European integration. Symbolic acts and practices do not aim to solve problems directly but to give meaning to action. 109 In both cases, symbolic action aims to increase the acceptability of the French-German proposals at the EU level by falling within the French-German motor tradition. It introduces stability in contexts where preferences can change quickly (like British preferences in Saint-Malo in 1998, or to the contrary since June 2016 with Brexit).
Conclusion
This article aimed to demonstrate how, in the context of a crisis, policy entrepreneurs within governments have managed to couple the three streams of politics, policy, and problem to launch and relaunch European defence policy in 1998–1999 and 2016–2019. By relying on the Multiple Stream Framework, the article has focused on the analysis of the policy entrepreneurship led by French and German governmental entrepreneurs, and how they interacted with the British variable in the birth and relaunch of European defence policy. The msf is an interesting approach because it enables us to provide an actor-level analysis of European defence as a specific kind of public policy, whereas much of the literature on the issue focuses on macro-level strategic analysis. It sheds light on the politicisation process regarding a strategic topic like European defence policy, and shows that it is far from only being the playground of experts.
However, the msf does not tell us much about the long-term durability of qualitative change in European defence. 110 We therefore need to rely on other analytical tools to assess the potential and limits of this change, not only for csdp but also regarding the commitment of France and Germany to giving Europe more strategic autonomy. Approaches based on historical institutionalism and historical sociology are therefore a useful complementary approach to understanding the limits of the relaunch of European defence. Many challenges remain, and will test this relaunch, such as recurring differences regarding France, Germany and their Eastern partners’ relationship with nato, the use of force, diverging strategic cultures, and differences at the operational level. 111
As long as the gap between expectations and consensus exists, the EU will fall short of becoming a consistent strategic actor. 112 However, it is stimulating to study the launch and relaunch of European defence in the late 1990s and after Brexit through the lens of msf, as it provides good insights into how European topics can reach the EU agenda and remain priorities when supported by well-positioned stakeholders.
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The author wants to warmly thank Christopher Hill and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier version of this article.
European Council Meeting, Conclusions, Brussels, 15 December 2016, p. 3.
Menon, “From crisis to catharsis”, 2004.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003.
The concepts will be defined below.
For instance, see Duke, “The Enigmatic Role”, 2018a; Duke, Will Brexit Damage, 2018b; Krotz and Maher, “Europe in an age of transition”, 2017; Krotz and Schild, “Back to the Future?” 2018; Tocci, “Towards a European Security”, 2018.
We could add the general security environment of the EU with security challenges in the Middle East and Ukraine, but the Brexit vote really acted as a focusing event, whereas the other challenges persisted for many years without managing to make European defence a more substantial issue before the trauma of the outcome of the Brexit vote for many European political leaders.
In a scientific experiment, a change in the independent variable may induce a change in the dependent variable, which is European defence here.
We used it in our own doctoral dissertation as a heuristic tool (Deschaux-Beaume, De l’Eurocorps à une armée, 2008).
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003.
Ibid., 165.
These actors will be identified clearly in the next section. This focus on French and German actors does not mean that we ignore the role played by other EU member states to fuel European defence, especially the Scandinavian states in 1998–1999, and Poland and the Baltic States since 1914 and the Ukraine crisis. Yet the aim of the article is mainly to focus on the actors who initiated the movement towards European defence, which explains the specific French-German focus, as Paris and Berlin have long been viewed as an engine of European integration, even though they may be an ambiguous engine (see Deschaux-Dutard, “La coopération militaire” 2019a).
Yet we will take into account prior elements in our analysis, as the developments below show.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003 (1st ed.: 1984).
Zahariadis, “Ambiguity and choice”, 2008; Ackrill and Kay, “Multiple streams”, 2011; Ackrill, Kay and Zahariadis, “Ambiguity, streams”, 2013; Zohlnhöfer and Rüb, Decision-making, 2016; Saurugger and Terpan, “Do crises lead”, 2016; Herweg and Zahariadis, “The Multiple Streams Approach”, 2018.
Beland and Howlett, “The role and impact”, 2016.
Durant and Diehl, “Agendas, alternatives”, 1989; Travis and Zahariadis, “A multiple streams model”, 2002; Zahariadis, Essence of Political Manipulation, 2005.
Bossong, The evolution of EU counter-terrorism, 2012; David, “Policy Entrepreneurs”, 2015; Archuleta, “Rediscovering Defense Policy”, 2016.
Zahariadis, The Multiple Streams Framework, 2007, 85.
See for instance Ackrill, Kay and Zahariadis, “Ambiguity, streams” 2013; Cairney and Zaharidais, “Multiple streams approach”, 2016.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003, 116.
Zahariadis, The Multiple Streams Framework 2007.
Keeler, “Opening the window for reform”, 1993.
Schimmelfennig, Theorising crisis, 2017, 316.
See Keeler’s typology of crisis in Keeler, “Opening the window for reform”, 1993.
In the case of Brexit for instance, Chancellor Angela Merkel described Brexit as a ‘watershed for Europe’ (Merkel 2016) on June 24, 2016.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003, 173.
Ibid., 94–95.
France and Germany have for a long time been engaged in close military cooperation. Initiated by the Elysée Treaty of 1963, their bilateral military cooperation became truly active in the late 1980s with the creation of the French-German Brigade. Since then, they have developed their military cooperation not only institutionally, but also on the ground. Deschaux-Dutard, The French-German Military, 2019b; Krotz and Schild, Shaping Europe, 2013.
This is particularly the case for Italy and Spain and even the neutral states in the late 1990s, and for Poland and the Baltic states after the Georgia crisis in 2008, and even more so since the annexation of Crimea, even though the latter states tend to keep favouring nato and see European defence policy as a complement to the Alliance.
Zahariadis, Ambiguity, time and multiple streams 1999, 74; Zahariadis, The Multiple Streams Framework 2007, 74.
See next section.
See, for instance, the French President’s speech at the Sorbonne in September 2017 (Macron 2017).
Interviews in Paris, Berlin and Brussels, October 2005-May 2007 and December 2016-March 2017.
We analyse in detail the actors who pushed the solution forward in the next section.
Interviews with former diplomatic counsellors of President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, Paris and Berlin, April 2005 and May 2006.
We refer specifically to tensions after the military intervention in Bosnia and the management of the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s and tensions generated by the recurring mistrust expressed by President Trump for his European partners in nato in 2016–2019.
Howorth, “European defence policy”, 2017. We come back to this disagreement in the next section.
See the interviews conducted in Dover, “Prime Minister”, 2005, 518–519. Our own interviews with Hubert Védrine and with a former counsellor of French Minister of Defence Alain Richard in 1998 confirmed this. Interviews in Paris, October 2005.
See the speech by the French President at the Sorbonne in September 2017 (Macron 2017). We also rely on an interview with a diplomat in Paris in March 2017.
Howlett, McConnell and Perl, “Streams and stages”, 2015.
Cairney and Zahariadis, “Multiple streams approach”, 2016, 95.
There again, the focus on French and German actors does not mean ignoring the role played by the other EU member states in European defence. It has been justified earlier, and this focus helps develop an in-depth analysis of the actors here.
For instance, Laurent Billy for President Chirac and Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut for Chancellor Schröder and their governments in 1998–1999; Philippe Etienne and Clément Beaune for President Macron and Christoph Heusgen until 2017 for Chancellor Merkel, to name just a few. We had the opportunity to interview most of them, either in their offices or by phone. Other interviewed counsellors wanted to remain anonymous.
We need to acknowledge that the mandate of some of the policy players in Brussels evolved toward encompassing more competences between the two periods, as in the case of the High Representative.
Phone interview with a counsellor of the High Representative, December 2016.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003, 170.
Mahoney, “Path dependence”, 2000.
Zahariadis, The Multiple Streams Framework, 2007, 74.
Interviews with former diplomatic counsellors of President Mitterrand, Chancellor Kohl and Schröder in Paris and Berlin, October 2005-July 2006.
Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, Policy change and learning, 1993; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, “The Advocacy Coalition”, 1999.
See Rees, “Setting the parameters”, 1998.
Both heads of state made extensive use of the practice of common letters sent to other European partners so as to develop reflections on a European foreign and defence policy in 1990–1991. Specifically, three letters before the European Council in Dublin in April 1990, in November 1990 and in October 1991. This last letter led to the creation of the Eurocorps, a multinational military unit based in Strasbourg.
Maastricht Treaty, article J.4–1.
The German Federal Constitutional Court had just authorized the principle of military deployment outside German territory in 1994 but the political elite remained clearly divided and reluctant regarding military interventions at this time. Interviews in Paris with Hubert Védrine and in Paris, Berlin and Brussels with several former diplomatic and military counsellors of the French and German defence ministers Alain Richard and Rudolf Scharping, October 2005-July 2006. See also Dyson, “German Military Reform”, 2005 and Dyson, The politics of German defence, 2007.
Interview with a former counsellor of the French Minister of Defence Alain Richard, Brussels, 2006 and a former German Chief of Staff, Berlin, June 2006.
See Salmon and Shepherd, Toward a European Army, 2003; Dover, “Prime Minister”, 2005. Howorth even claims that Blair took the decision underlying the Saint-Malo agreement in the face of opposition from both the Conservative party and most members of his own party. See Howorth, "Britain, NATO and CESDP”, 2000.
It is, however, important to bear in mind that Saint-Malo, though it was the founding decision that enabled the birth of European defence policy, can also be seen as an agreement to disagree between the French and British policy actors who developed a rather different understanding of the consequences of this agreement for European Defence. See Howorth, “Britain, nato and cesdp”, 2000; Gegout, “The French and British”, 2002; Smith, “European defence”, 2015; Whitman, “The UK and EU foreign and security policy”, 2016b.
Tony Blair indeed expressed this change of preference at the informal European Summit at Portschäsch on 24–25 October 1988. See Howorth, “Britain, nato and cesdp”, 2000; Gegout, “The French and British”, 2002.
Howorth, “Britain, nato and cesdp”, 2000.
The European Security and Defence Policy became the Common Security and Defence Policy (csdp) with the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.
See for instance Missiroli, “Italian defence policy”, 2001.
This qualitative progress was welcomed by the European Council (Foreign Affairs Council) on 20 November 2018 as significant steps toward more European strategic autonomy. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/fac/2018/11/19-20/?utm_source=dsms-auto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Foreign+Affairs+Council+(Defence)%2c+19-20%2f11%2f2018 Consulted on 13/10/2019.
On the role of the UK as a ‘laggard’ in European defence in the last decade, see particularly Whitman, “The UK and EU foreign, security and defence policy”, 2016a and Whitman, “The UK and EU foreign and security policy, 2016b; Duke, Will Brexit Damage, 2018b.
See Giegerich and Terhalle, “The Munich consensus”, 2016.
A French-German joint contribution issued by the French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and German Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier entitled “A strong Europe in a world of uncertainties” was issued on 28 June 2016, only five days after the referendum in the UK.
See the French-German joint contribution issued on 11 September 2016 by the French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and his German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen that emphasizes the idea of a European defence union, which has already been proposed in 2000.
See for instance his address during the state of the Union on September 14th 2016: “Towards a better Europe – a Europe that protects, empowers and defends,” http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-16-3043_en.htm. Accessed on 13/10/2019.
Here both Ministers of Defence Le Drian and von der Leyen played a crucial role as policy entrepreneurs a year before President Macron underlined the importance of EU’s strategic autonomy in his speech in La Sorbonne.
The idea of a European military planning structure is not new; it appeared in 2003 at the Tervuren Summit (or ‘Chocolate Summit’) between France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands and had been vetoed several times by London.
pesco already existed in the Lisbon Treaty but remained unused.
Boin and t’Hart, “Public Leadership”, 2003.
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017/06/08-military-mpcc-planning-conduct-capability/ Accessed on 16/10/2019.
However, one must limit the scope of this qualitative progress. The Europeanisation of the French-German initiative remains at a lower level than both countries had imagined; the mpcc will only manage non-executive missions and no high-intensity operations.
In the case of the edf, for instance, the former French Budget Minister played the role of policy entrepreneur and in July and September 2016 proposed the creation of a European Fund for Defence based on French-German military cooperation. This proposal was welcomed by the French and German heads of state and the European Commission. Phone interview with a counsellor of the High Representative, December 2016. See also Haroche, The European Defence Fund, 2018.
As several interviewees told us, ideas tended to circulate quickly between Paris, Berlin and Brussels to make EU strategic autonomy a top priority on the EU agenda.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003, 132–137.
There have been too many expert publications on European defence and the role of France and Germany as its driving force in 1998–1999 and since 2016 to cite them all here. The ifri website in France and swp in Germany are particularly rich on this issue.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003, 175.
Here we use Eurobarometer surveys, which may be handled with precautions as the questions concerning European defence are not details and their formulation remains quite general, which makes it difficult to have a polarized opinion contrary to polls conducted on a national basis for instance.
One must be careful when comparing Eurobarometer surveys with national surveys, as their design and aims are very different. We will not enter the debate on measuring public opinion here, as it is beyond the scope of this article.
http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/STANDARD/yearFrom/1991/yearTo/2000/surveyKy/1425 Consulted on 13/10/2019.
http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/STANDARD/yearFrom/1991/yearTo/2000/surveyKy/1424 Consulted on 13/103/2019.
http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/STANDARD/yearFrom/1991/yearTo/2000/surveyKy/1409 Consulted on 13/10/2019.
Only 22% of British respondents thought the decision-making concerning European defence should be at European level against 56% in France and 38% in Germany in 2001 (Eurobarometer 146 on European defence). https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/ebs/ebs_146_summ_en.pdf Consulted on 5/11/2019.
Blesse et al., Searching for a Franco-German consensus, 2016.
http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/SPECIAL/yearFrom/1974/yearTo/2016/search/463/surveyKy/2173 Consulted on 19/10/2019.
National polls may however show a level of support that is a bit lower because the formulation of the question may be different and more polarized than in the Eurobarometer surveys.
https://www.fes.de/presse/aktuelle-pressehinweise/umfrage-knappe-mehrheit-fuer-europaeische-armee/ Consulted on 9/05/2020.
Source : http://www.leparisien.fr/politique/une-armee-europeenne-les-francais-votent-pour-29-03-2019-8042823.php Consulted on 9/05/2020.
See Duke, Will Brexit Damage, 2018b.
We will not discuss here the quality of this public opinion support for European defence and the understanding of European defence at the citizens’ level as it is beyond the scope of this article.
Edelman, Political language, 2013.
Krotz and Schild, Shaping Europe, 2013.
t’Hart, “Symbols, Rituals and Power”, 1993; Zahariadis, The Multiple Streams Framework, 2007; Edelman, Political language, 2013.
Boin and t’Hart 2003, “Public Leadership”, 551.
Kingdon, Agendas, alternatives, 2003; Boin and t’Hart, “Public Leadership”, 2003.
t’Hart , “Symbols, Rituals and Power”, 1993.
To borrow a term used by Tilly, Regimes and repertoires, 2010.
Krotz and Schild, Shaping Europe, 2013.
This analogy managed to convince Joschka Fischer, the first-ever Green foreign Minister in Germany, to accept Germany’s commitment to nato military intervention in Kosovo. It was the first time that Germany had gone to war since World War ii and the irony of history required the decision to be made by a Green minister. See Hockenos, Joschka Fischer, 2007.
Sabatier, Jenkins-Smith, Policy change and learning, 1993.
For many political, institutional and operational reasons, a European army is not a realistic objective in the short run but serves as an interesting political symbol in times of transatlantic tensions.
Deschaux-Dutard, The French-German Military, 2019b.
Boin, t’Hart and McConnell, “Crisis Exploitation”, 2009.
Interview in Berlin, 2005.
Emmanuel Macron, Speech at the Sorbonne, 2017.
The myth of Charlemagne as the Rex Pater Europae or founding myth of European unification is frequently conveyed in French-German cooperation.
t’Hart , “Symbols, Rituals and Power”, 1993; Krotz and Schild, Shaping Europe, 2013, 77.
See Deschaux-Dutard, The French-German Military, 2019b.
The example of the divergent points of view of President Macron and Chancellor Merkel on nato speaks volumes, as President Macron declared nato a ‘brain-dead’ organization on November 7, 2019; https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-warns-europe-nato-is-becoming-brain-dead Consulted on November 8 2019.
Toje, “The consensus—expectations gap”, 2008.
