Eurointelligence newsbriefing

Sophia Besch has an excellent analysis on the state of European defence and foreign policy coordination. Besch writes that the Europeans are underestimating the potential impact of Donald Trump, who has severely damaged the EU’s security by questioning Nato's security guarantee. And with Brexit the EU will lose one of its strongest European militaries, as well as a country in favour of more competition in defence procurement. She says that Trump is right to criticise the EU for lack of defence spending, and fears that differences between France and Germany on the future direction of the common security and defence policy might weaken the EU further. And it's going to be tricky to co-operate with, let alone integrate, the UK. 

“Brexit will not prevent the UK from participating in exercises and operations that are conducted outside the CSDP framework. But to include the UK in the EU’s military activities post-Brexit, London and Brussels will have to negotiate a third-country association arrangement... 

The UK will not want to accept the subordinate role that the EU currently assigns to non-EU troop-contributing countries. British officials have indicated that they want to negotiate a ‘privileged’ partnership with the EU – though they have not yet specified what that entails. This means that the political fall-out from a worsening relationship between the EU-27 and London could affect the security and defence relationship as well. If the UK squanders Europe’s goodwill over the course of the Brexit negotiations, a privileged status for the British on defence matters may become elusive.”