In response to the worsening security environment, cuts to European defence budgets are finally being reversed. In this Brief, defence spending data from 2015 are spliced by region and by category to show how the calculus is changing in defence ministries across Europe....
With Georgians set to go to the polls on Saturday 8 October, this Brief examines the changing dynamics of the country’s domestic politics and foreign relations over the last few years. What should be the priority for whoever wins the next parliamentary elections?...
Eight years after the revolution, Libya is in the middle of a civil war. For more than four years, international conflict resolution efforts have centred on the UN-sponsored Libya Political Agreement (LPA) process, unfortunately without achieving any breakthrough. In fact, the situation has even...
The first EUISS Brief of 2015 explores the possibility of other jihadi groups evolving along the lines of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). What explains the organisation’s spectacular rise? And what elements are required for other groups to replicate ISIL’s achievements?...
As the EU anti-migrant smuggling operation in the Mediterranean sea – known as ‘EUNAVFOR Med’ or ‘Operation Sophia’ – enters its operational phase, this Brief examines the background to the mission and shows how this operation confirms the maritime dimension of CSDP in the management of new type...
EU member states have long avoided applying EU law to defence by extensively relying – implicitly or explicitly – on Article 346. Using recent case law, this Brief shows how this is now becoming increasingly difficult....
The restoration of a democratically-elected political authority in the Central African Republic (CAR) three years after the outbreak of its latest conflict episode is a positive breakthrough, but no panacea. Unable to shoulder the burden of conflict on its own, it will require sustained internat...
Almost 20 years ago, an early assessment of the role of the EU in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons concluded that it performed better at addressing the arms control agenda in multilateral fora than at resolving proliferation crises. The reasons for this seemed straightforward: a composit...
Euro-Atlantic audiences are increasingly alarmed at Russia’s behaviour at home and abroad. This Brief examines the Russian worldview in order to understand how and why the Russian leadership acts as it does....
This Brief looks at the new ‘military planning and conduct capability’ (MPCC) structure. How did this come into existence? And what does it mean for the EU in terms of command structure?...