It contains the first-ever agreed EU threat assessment and adapts the EU’s security and defence programmes much more to today’s more challenging security environment, characterised by great power rivalry and possible conflict. The EU’s new Strategic Compass certainly represents a major advance on its previous strategy documents. The EPC Round-up collects contributions from EPC analysts and experts in the field, bringing together various points of view for a more comprehensive and nuanced picture. In this brand-new format, the EPC assesses pivotal EU policies from different angles. Will the EU be able to keep up the momentum for developing its defence capabilities? Will the Strategic Compass be a game-changer for EU security and defence at this watershed moment?

Never before have the EU’s security and defence aspirations been spelled out so ambitiously.īut the history of European defence has been rife with promises and plans that have come and gone with little to no avail. There is a long list of deliverables, from a rapid reaction force to cyber and hybrid defence. Now that the Compass has been adopted, the real work can begin. Part strategy, part action plan, the Compass – adopted amid President Putin’s war of aggression on Ukraine – is the new guide for the EU’s security and defence ambitions in the next five to ten years. The Strategic Compass for a stronger EU security and defence, developed over the past 18 months, was endorsed by European leaders on 24 March.

Strategic war in europe