From ESDP to CSDP: The EU’s Security and Defence Policy

The EU’s security and defence policy was born out of embarrassment. Through the 1990s, war returned to Europe in the former Yugoslavia and the Union that had just given itself a Common Foreign and Security Policy found it could do little without American power. The turning point came at Saint-Malo in December 1998, when Britain and France, the two member states with serious expeditionary forces, jointly declared that the Union “must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces”. Within a year the European Council in Cologne had launched the European Security and Defence Policy, ESDP, and a decade later the Lisbon Treaty renamed and upgraded it as the Common Security and Defence Policy, CSDP.

The change of initials in December 2009 was more than housekeeping. It marked the passage of European defence cooperation from improvised experiment to permanent institution. This article traces that arc: where ESDP came from, what it did in the field, what the Lisbon Treaty changed, and what the policy has become since.

Origins: Petersberg tasks and the Helsinki Headline Goal

The substance of ESDP predated its name. In 1992 the Western European Union defined the so-called Petersberg tasks, humanitarian and rescue operations, peacekeeping, and crisis management including peacemaking, which the Amsterdam Treaty folded into the EU framework in 1999. Cologne gave the project political direction in June 1999 and appointed Javier Solana, fresh from serving as NATO Secretary General, as the first High Representative for the CFSP. In December 1999 the Helsinki European Council set the Headline Goal: by 2003, member states should be able to deploy up to 60,000 troops within 60 days and sustain them for at least a year.

Capability targets on paper met a harder question in practice: how a Union without its own command structures would actually run operations. The answer, negotiated over four difficult years, was the Berlin Plus arrangements of March 2003, which gave the EU assured access to NATO planning capabilities for operations in which the alliance as a whole was not engaged.

2003: the year ESDP went operational

Everything moved at once in 2003. In January the EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina took over from the UN’s International Police Task Force, the first ESDP operation of any kind. In March, Operation Concordia in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia became the first military operation, using Berlin Plus arrangements. In June, Operation Artemis deployed to Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first autonomous EU military operation outside Europe, run without NATO assets. And in December the European Security Strategy gave the policy a doctrine, opening with a sentence that captured the moment’s confidence.

“Europe has never been so prosperous, so secure nor so free.”

The strategy identified terrorism, proliferation, regional conflicts, state failure and organised crime as the key threats, and argued for preventive engagement, a theme developed in this analysis of EU conflict prevention policy.

What the missions actually did

Between 2003 and the Lisbon Treaty, ESDP launched more than twenty operations, and their variety became the policy’s signature. EUFOR Althea took over from NATO’s SFOR in Bosnia in December 2004 and, beyond stabilisation, helped disrupt the support networks of war crimes fugitives, contributing to the 2008 arrest of Radovan Karadzic, a rare direct link between crisis management and international justice explored further in this account of the EU and transitional justice.

The Aceh Monitoring Mission of 2005 showed a different face: a civilian operation supervising the disarmament of the Free Aceh Movement after a peace agreement that EU funding had helped mediate, with human rights monitors deployed for the first time in an ESDP mission. In 2008 came three landmarks in a single year: EULEX Kosovo, the largest civilian mission ever launched, with judges, prosecutors and police; the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia, deployed within weeks of the August war, whose context is examined in this conflict analysis of Georgia; and EUNAVFOR Atalanta, the first EU naval operation, launched against piracy off Somalia. Four successive missions in the DRC worked on police and army reform, an experience assessed in this study of security system reform in the DRC.

Two structural facts stand out from that record. Most ESDP missions were civilian, not military, a balance no other security organisation matched. And the missions increasingly operated where peace agreements needed implementation, which tied the policy’s fortunes to the quality of the mediation that preceded deployment.

The Lisbon Treaty: ESDP becomes CSDP

The Lisbon Treaty, in force from 1 December 2009, renamed ESDP the Common Security and Defence Policy and changed its legal and institutional foundations in five ways. It created a mutual assistance clause obliging member states to aid a member that is the victim of armed aggression. It expanded the Petersberg tasks to include joint disarmament operations, military advice and assistance, conflict prevention and post-conflict stabilisation. It provided for Permanent Structured Cooperation, PESCO, allowing willing member states to integrate defence efforts more deeply. It double-hatted the High Representative as a Vice-President of the Commission, bridging the Union’s diplomatic and funding arms. And it established the European External Action Service, which took over the crisis management structures and now runs missions and operations under the authority of the EEAS.

Researchers working on European peacemaking at the time of the transition urged one further step: making mediation a recognised instrument within CFSP and the renamed CSDP, with mediation training for mission personnel who face local frictions from the day a deployment begins. The argument, developed in this practical guide to mediation in peace processes, was that a Union with monitoring missions, funding instruments and diplomatic weight could link them into a single peacemaking chain, as it briefly did in Aceh.

CSDP since Lisbon

The post-Lisbon years converted the treaty’s dormant provisions into working machinery. PESCO was activated in December 2017 with 25 participating member states and dozens of joint capability projects. The European Defence Fund began financing collaborative defence research and development from the Union budget. A Military Planning and Conduct Capability was created in 2017 to command non-executive military missions from Brussels. The Strategic Compass, adopted in March 2022 in the shadow of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, set a target of a 5,000-strong EU Rapid Deployment Capacity, and the European Peace Facility began financing military assistance, including arms deliveries to Ukraine, of a kind the old ESDP could never have contemplated. Analyses of this evolution are collected by the EU Institute for Security Studies, itself an ESDP-era creation.

Since 2003 the Union has launched some four dozen civilian missions and military operations across three continents. The pattern set in the ESDP years still holds: the EU’s comparative advantage lies less in high-intensity warfighting than in the long, unglamorous work of stabilisation, monitoring, reform and implementation that turns ceasefires into settlements.

Frequently asked questions

What was the ESDP?

The European Security and Defence Policy was the EU’s framework for military and civilian crisis management operations, launched by the Cologne European Council in June 1999 as part of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. It became operational in 2003 and was renamed the Common Security and Defence Policy by the Lisbon Treaty.

What is the difference between ESDP and CSDP?

CSDP is the successor of ESDP. The Lisbon Treaty, in force from 1 December 2009, renamed the policy and strengthened it with a mutual assistance clause, expanded tasks, provision for Permanent Structured Cooperation and a new institutional home in the European External Action Service.

Why was the ESDP created?

The wars in the former Yugoslavia exposed Europe’s inability to manage crises on its own continent without the United States. The 1998 Saint-Malo declaration by Britain and France called for autonomous EU capacity backed by credible military forces, and the EU institutionalised that ambition at Cologne in 1999.

What are the Petersberg tasks?

Defined by the Western European Union in 1992 and incorporated into the EU by the Amsterdam Treaty, the Petersberg tasks cover humanitarian and rescue operations, peacekeeping, and crisis management including peacemaking. The Lisbon Treaty expanded them to include disarmament operations, military assistance, conflict prevention and post-conflict stabilisation.

What was the Helsinki Headline Goal?

Agreed by the Helsinki European Council in December 1999, it committed member states to be able to deploy up to 60,000 troops within 60 days and sustain them for at least a year by 2003, as the capability basis for EU-led crisis management operations.

What are the Berlin Plus arrangements?

A package of agreements concluded between the EU and NATO in March 2003 giving the Union assured access to NATO planning capabilities, and potential use of alliance assets, for EU-led operations in which NATO as a whole is not engaged. Operation Concordia in Macedonia was the first to use them.

What was the first ESDP mission?

The EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, launched in January 2003, was the first ESDP operation. Operation Concordia in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, from March 2003, was the first military operation, and Operation Artemis in the DRC, from June 2003, the first autonomous military operation outside Europe.

Are most CSDP missions military or civilian?

Civilian. Across the policy’s history the majority of deployments have been civilian missions covering policing, rule of law, border assistance and monitoring, such as EULEX Kosovo and the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia, alongside a smaller number of military operations.

What did the Lisbon Treaty change for EU security and defence policy?

It renamed ESDP as CSDP, introduced a mutual assistance clause for armed aggression against a member state, expanded the policy’s tasks, provided for Permanent Structured Cooperation among willing states, double-hatted the High Representative as Commission Vice-President and created the European External Action Service.

What is PESCO?

Permanent Structured Cooperation is the Lisbon Treaty mechanism allowing member states willing to make binding defence commitments to cooperate more deeply. Dormant for eight years, it was activated in December 2017 with 25 participants and now hosts dozens of joint capability projects.

How many CSDP missions has the EU launched?

Since 2003 the EU has launched roughly forty civilian missions and military operations across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, ranging from police and rule of law missions to naval operations and military training missions.