How do Crises Fuel European Defence Policy?

This article analyses how crises may open policy windows which, when properly seized by policy entrepreneurs, made European defence policy a priority on the EU’s agenda. The article compares two periods which can be considered as critical junctures for European defence: the periods of its birth in 1998–1999, and its relaunch in 2016–2019. The analysis is based on the Multiple Stream Framework (msf) and considers European defence as a public policy shaped by policy actors. More precisely, the main hypothesis is that in both contexts policy actors from France and Germany took advantage of focusing events – the Kosovo War in 1998–1999, and Brexit extended by the election of Trump introducing turmoil within the transatlantic partnership in 2016–2019 – to advocate a policy solution to answer security challenges faced by the EU. The article also assesses how British policy actors played decisive yet inverse roles in both contexts. The first part of the article explains how the msf is used and why it is a stimulating agenda to study European defence policy. The second part of the article analyses the policy entrepreneurs taking advantage of the policy windows opened in both cases, and how they coupled the three streams underlying European defence by exploiting the British variable. The last part of the article focuses on the means used by the policy entrepreneurs to make it a policy priority on the European policy agenda in both the late 1990s and 2016–2019.