The Influence of EU Agencies on Government Preferences: The Case of EU Cooperation on Defence and Security

In the last five years, the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Council have developed a package of measures that aim to improve the effectiveness of the EU Cooperation on Defence and Security. This process has increased the role played by EU agencies, such as the European Defence Agency and the European External Action Service; it has increased their ability to influence national strategies and preferences and has resulted in more cooperative outcomes. By using Rational Choice Institutionalism theory, the proposed research aims to understand the abilities of EU agencies to alter Member States preferences by reformulating national interests in light of European security and defence goals. Through their role in controlling and assessing cooperative projects proposed by national governments, EU agencies act as ‘gatekeepers’ and ‘agenda setters’ of strategic culture, thus redefining governments’ interests and cognitive strategic paradigms. Furthermore, structuration theory facilitates understanding to what extent the interaction among EU agencies and Member States are mutually constitutive. By adopting a principal-agent model (P-A), the research will analyse how EU agencies in the defence and security sector can pursue European interests, and how they operate to achieve Europeanised security and defence. Both constructivism and rationalism approach will be used to explain changes in the ‘operational’ beliefs of national strategic cultures and actors’ preferences, while a network analysis will be used to investigate the interactions among different EU agencies, thus defining the relevant ’agent’ in the P-A model. Findings and outcomes will be interpreted under the Europeanisation concept.