Combined differentiation in European defense: tailoring Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) to strategic and political complexity
Journal: Contemporary Security Policy
Year: 2022

Sustaining meaningful defense cooperation in Europe is made difficult by defense-industrial fragmentation, a multiplicity of institutional frameworks, divergent strategic cultures and domestic opposition to integration. The European Union’s recent foray into defense integration incorporates multiple forms of differentiation to overcome these barriers, with Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) characterized by selective membership, external participation, and project-based clustering. Such “c