This paper seeks to address the role of nation states in crisis management in two key international organisations active in Europe and beyond: the European Union and NATO. This has become especially relevant in recent times since Europe faces many crises in its nearer neighbourhood, such as in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Despite the increasing interests of academic scholars in crisis management as well as in foreign policy-making and bargaining (Thomas 2009), little attention has been paid to the key role of member states (cf. Wessel 2011). One approach is to move forward the debate on EU-NATO conflict management cooperation by analysing the interactions between the two organisations on the member state level. Drawing on findings from the study of institutional interactions and division of labour among institutions (Gehring/ Oberthür 2009, Gehring/Faude 2013), this paper adds to the understanding of the role of member states in inter-organisational cooperation. While being member in both the EU and NATO, some member states still prefer one over the other in crisis management. However, as in the case of launching military operations off the Somali coast in 2008, a position shift had been recorded by some key member states, such as the United Kingdom which initially preferred a NATO solution over an EU approach (Grimond/Smith 2009, Riddervold 2014). As this paper seeks to argue, more importance should be given to the role of member states within international security organisations, which would further contribute to the discussion of inter-organisational cooperation among EU and NATO in planning and conducting military crisis management operations. This paper therefore aims to contribute to the understanding of the role of member states and what means they have at their disposal to circumvent institutional constraints and incompatibility to continue institutional interactions between the EU and NATO.
