ABSTRACT
The purchase and the development of weapons and related materiel are activities linked to core functions of the notion of the Westphalian nation state, namely national defence. Yet, at the dawn of the new century major regulatory and policy changes have emerged in this area in the context of the European Union (EU). The process of EU integration in the area of defence procurement reached its regulatory culmination with the enactment of the Defence and Security Procurement (DSP) Directive (European Commission 2009a). This chapter reflects upon the ten years since the establishment of the European Defence Agency (EDA) and analyses the role of the latter in the process of European integration in defence procurement. The chapter examines the various initiatives undertaken so far by the EDA in the process of Europeanisation of a policy area that has been linked to core functions of the state and, for that reason, based upon a decision-making process carried out primarily at national level. The chapter argues that the contribution of the EDA in the process of European integration in the field of defence procurement has been especially noteworthy. In particular the chapter submits that the EDA played a crucial role in two ways. First, it demystified and rendered more acceptable the deliberation at the EU level of issues pertaining to the design, rules and policies of defence procurement. Second, by doing so it provided additional political ‘legitimisation’ to the process of integration of European defence equipment market, which led to the enactment of the DSP Directive. The chapter is organised as follows. Section 2 provides the necessary clarifications regarding the definitions of key concepts. Section 3 places the EDA in its historical and political context and suggests that the EDA should be seen not only as an institutional offspring of political developments in the area of ‘high politics’, such as the emergence of ESDP, but also an institutional product that incorporates lessons learned from previous efforts of coordination in the area of defence procurement in Europe. Section 4 examines the EDA initiatives undertaken in the area of
defence procurement. Then, section 5 discusses their impact on the process of integration in this area, and section 6 presents a synopsis of the argument and some concluding thoughts.
