Following the adoption of the EU Global Strategy in 2016, the mechanism of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) received a new impetus. Taken together with the launch of a European defence fund by the European Commission, the EU seems to be more prepared than ever to address questions of a common European defence.
The paper will examine the developments that led to deeper cooperation between European member states in matters of defence, following the failure to create a European Defence Community in the 1950s. The anticipated design of the European Defence Community which would have been supranational in nature will be compared to the EU’s current common defence policy aspirations. The second part of the paper will analyse the legal implications of the current status of European defence cooperation, in particular by examining the mutual assistance clause as well as the mechanism of Permanent Structured Cooperation. Overall, it will be questioned whether the EU is slowly turning into a system of military alliance.
