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ABSTRACT
The creation of the European Defence Agency (EDA) in 2004 represented an important step towards more cooperation in the European defence industry. Notwithstanding the Agency’s potential for redefining relations between domestic and European defence industries, few analysts have systematically examined the EU member states’ preferences towards the EDA. This article – focusing on two theoretical approaches to uncovering the contradictory nature of EU defence-industry cooperation – investigates the specific case of Italian interaction with the Agency. Despite the predominantly empirical focus of the analysis, I argue that a detailed investigation of Italian interaction with the Agency sheds light on unexplored aspects of its behaviour in the EU context, contributing to the recent academic debate on Italian foreign, security and defence policy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Institutional logic can be defined as ‘the socially constructed, historical pattern of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organise time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality’ (Thornton and Ocasio Citation1999, 804).
2. Rassemblement pour la République (RPR); Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP).
3. The Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (French: Organisation conjointe de coopération en matière d’armement: OCCAR), created in 1998, is a European intergovernmental organisation which facilitates and manages collaborative armaments programmes among Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
4. The Letter of Intent (LoI) Framework Agreement (FA) Treaty was signed on 27 July 2000 by the defence ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It aimed to create the political and legal framework necessary to facilitate industrial restructuring in order to promote a more competitive and robust European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) in the global defence market.
5. For the UK see Ministry of Defence, ‘National security through technology: technology, equipment, and support for UK defence and security’, Cm. 8278 (London, TSO, 2012), p. 13. For France see ‘Les capacités militaires industrielles critiques’ http://www.senat.fr/rap/r11-634/r11-6342.html.
6. Retrieved from http://register.consilium.europa.eu/doc/srv?l=EN&t=PDF&f=CG+57+2003+INIT .
7. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Power Europe (SHAPE) is NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.
8. Opening remarks by Prime Minister Tony Blair in ‘Transcript of the Joint Press conference by the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of Italy at the conclusion of the UK-Italian annual summit’, London, 13 July 2004.
9. See Oikonomou (Citation2015) for a detailed examination of the European defence industry`s role in the period of institutionalisation of the EDA.
10. According to the EDA website, Italy is currently participating in more than 30 projects. With Germany and France, it is the country that has participated most. Available from: http://www.eda.europa.eu/what-we-do/activities/activities-search. Accessed 18 July 2017.
11. French National Assembly, Commission des Affaires Europèennes, “Rapport d’information n. 911 sur la relance de l’Europe de la dèfenseˮ, quoted by Kunz (Citation2015, 76).
12. European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) is a transnational defence company, created in 1999 with the involvement of the French, German and Spanish aerospace defence industries. See Guay and Callum (Citation2002).
13. The original quote is: ‘Quando il presidente della European Defence Agency (EDA) si è presentato e ha domandaoto di questo accordo (Lancanster House treaties), francesi e inglese chiaramente ne hanno parlato bene, mentre italiani, tedeschi e spagnoli hanno detto che se si fa così si spacca nuovamente il mercato e come contromossa ci sarà un tentativo di concludere un accordo con tedeschi, polacchi o spagnoli’.
14. ‘Les capacités militaires industrielles critiques’, http://www.senat.fr/rap/r11-634/r11-6342.html.
15. Italian Law Decree 06/07/2014 Available from: http://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2014/07/31/14G00120/sg%20.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Antonio Calcara
Antonio Calcara is a Ph.D. Candidate at the LUISS “Guido Carli”- Department of Political Science and Visiting Researcher at the Institute for European Studies – Vrije Universiteit (Brussels). He is currently working on his dissertation on armaments cooperation programmes at the European level, with a specific focus on how different configurations of state– defence industry relations in France, Germany, Italy and the UK impact on the choice to cooperate or not cooperate in multinational defence procurement projects.