Development of european security and defence cooperation in support of the European Union’s external action. Financial sustainability and institutional convergence

Optimizing the European Union’s external action requires a comprehensive approach to linking relevant EU instruments and policies to the development of interaction and practical arrangements for cooperation with third countries. An extremely important component concerns the interaction between the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and external action, whose dynamics have undergone notable developments in recent years. The substantial progress made in the development of an integrated formula for promoting external action validates the central assumption of the present study that European cooperation in the field of defence tends to become one of the important supporting elements of external action. Starting from this assumption, another direction of in-depth analysis in the following pages concerns the ambivalent relationship between the financial support that external action receives through the new Multiannual Framework 2021-2027 and the concrete initiatives developed under the aegis of CSDP with military applicability.