Implementeringen av EU:s fördjupade försvarssamarbete

Sammanfattning: The European Union initiated the Permanent Structural Cooperation (PESCO) in december 2017, which is a security and defence strategy based on the Treaty on European Union, in which 25 of the 28 union member-states participate in. It is a step towards deeper European integration for the EU-countries, which aims to bring together the national armed forces as a united power. The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker announced that PESCO was an historical milestone, followed by the French president Emanuel Macron who announced that this defence Cooperation was a step towards an independent European army. Within PESCO, the EU strives to achieve the concept of strategic autonomy, which can be considered a koncept of making EU defence independent. At the same time, EU strives to deepen the Cooperation with NATO. Could an effort in PESCO, and especially if this would be reinforced with an emphasis on strategic autonomy, lead to in-depth integration within the EU and a more active EU in world politics, either in cooperation with NATO or perhaps as a competitor of NATO in the long term? In this essay I will examine PESCO and what this defence cooperation may entail for the development of the EU and the role of the organization in the world. The method that is used in this thesis is qualitative content analysis. PESCO is analysed with the theory of intergovernmentalism, through three thematisations: 1) PESCO and European integration 2) PESCO and the relationship between EU and NATO 3) PESCO and the EU’s pursuit to achieve strategic autonomy