The process management of policy punctuations. The interplay between Commission and European Council on the defence challenge

This article analyses the European Union’s recent efforts and breakthroughs in the area of defence industrial cooperation. To explain ‘stop and go’ nature of this process, we bring in insights from the political attention literature, and adapt them to the specificities of the EU’s institutional environment. In the EU setting, major policy changes are propelled by the interplay between the European Council and the European Commission. In this institutional inter-relationship, the division of tasks and responsibilities is fluid and contextual. We explore and explain the modus operandi that the European Council and Commission developed for dealing with the defence challenge. This article reconstruct the policy- and decision-making processes on the most contentious proposals for significant joint funding mechanisms in defence, based upon real-time cooperation with key insiders. For this, we introduce a process management of policy punctuations (PMPP) model, which identifies five key elements that (can) lead to major policy breakthroughs within the EU system. In contrast to other areas of EU activity, EU defence industrial cooperation is still relatively limited both in terms of policy scope and funding. However, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the issue became ‘Chefsache’. European Council conclusions repeatedly called for actions to increase member state defence readiness, that allowed the Commission initially to propose several relatively small-scale initiatives, within the current MFF, as well as analytical work making the case for further developments. Subsequently, the European Council tasked the Commission with exploring more radical proposals for funding, including a potential common defence fund that could raise significant amounts (up to €100 billion) through the issuance of joint debt. This process eventually resulted in the swift and smooth proposal, endorsement and adoption of the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) Regulation, in the period of March to May 2025, within the confines of the White Paper on Defence Readiness 2030. In the discussion, we discuss the main features and implications of this institutional configuration for dealing with this defence and other major policy challenges, for instance in the areas of climate, migration or competitiveness. We contend that while the Commission can be considered as the ‘the driver’ of more defence industrial integration, it could only do this through cultivating an ‘enabling interdependence’ with the European Council. Rather than ‘leading’ in the classic sense, as the European Council did during crises and the Commission does during normal policy making, this reflects a new hybrid approach for dealing with major policy challenges, in which the Commission uses the EUCO as a mirror and sounding board for where (not) to go. On a theoretical level, we contribute to the policy punctuations literature, by bringing out the process managemen