The democratic legitimacy of European security and defence policy.
Date: 2005-04-30
Institutions: European Union Institute for Security Studies
Subjects: European security, common security and defence policy, democracy, international law

Occasional Paper

April 2005

n°57

Wolfgang Wagner

The democratic legitimacy
of European Security
and Defence Policy

published by 

the European Union 

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Occasional Paper

April 2005

n°57

by Wolfgang Wagner

The democratic legitimacy of
European Security and
Defence Policy

Wolfgang Wagner has an MA in political science from the University of Tübingen and a Ph.D. from the
University of Frankfurt am Main. Since 2002 he has been working at the Peace Research Institute Frank-
furt.  Publications  include  Die  Konstruktion  einer  europäischen  Außenpolitik (Frankfurt: 
Campus, 2002), ‘Why the EU’s foreign and security policy will remain intergovernmental’ (Journal of
European Public Policy 2003) and ‘Building an Internal Security Community’ (Journal of Peace
Research 2003).

1

Contents

Summary  

1

Introduction

2

3

Democratic legitimacy: a contested concept

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP
3.1 ESDP and public support
3.2 ESDP and national democracy
3.3 The European Parliament and ESDP
3.4 ESDP and international law

4

Conclusion

Annexes

Table 1. Support for key issues? Common Defence and Security Policy
Table 2. Defence: national or EU?
Table 3. Differences in support for European security policy
Table 4. EU level decision-making in defence
Table 5. Support for European defence

3

5

7

11

11

16

21

25

29

31

31

32

33

34

35

2

Summary

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

Since the EU has assumed responsibility for military operations, questions of democratic legitimacy

have become more prominent in European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Although democ-

racy has been a contested concept, four ‘pillars’ can be distinguished that contribute to a democrati-

cally legitimate ESDP. This Occasional Paper analyses each of these pillars.

The first pillar builds on the notion that democratic legitimacy results from the effective provision

of public goods (‘output legitimacy’). As the Europeanisation of security and defence policies helps to

provide public goods more efficiently, citizens support or even demand an ESDP. Eventually, legiti-

macy therefore rests on the concurrence of policies with citizens’ preferences (‘government for the

people’). Public opinion can be seen as an indicator of the extent of citizens’ demands for a European

security and defence policy. The available data suggest that there has been a permissive consensus as

regards the political project of a European security and defence policy. Such benevolent attitudes,

however, do not necessarily extend to a European defence policy ‘in action’. Moreover, large varia-

tions in support across member states persist. 

A second pillar has been suggested by adherents of ‘intergovernmental input legitimacy’, who

consider the ‘output’ of a political system less important for democratic legitimacy than the ‘input’

into decision-making. From this perspective, a policy is deemed legitimate to the extent that parlia-

ment has been able to participate in security and defence policy-making. Adherents of ‘intergovern-

mental input legitimacy’ emphasise in addition that only national parliaments can provide demo-

cratic legitimacy. However, the Europeanisation of defence policy tends to undermine national par-

liaments’ ability to exercise effective control over defence policy. 

Input legitimacy at the supranational level constitutes the third pillar of democratic legitimacy.

The European Parliament plays a key role in this regard but it lacks the powers to compensate for

national parliaments’ loss of powers. Another important way to redress the deficit of parliamentary

legitimacy is to strengthen cooperation between national parliaments, which could centre on the

European Parliament, COSAC or the WEU Assembly.

The fourth pillar is respect for and compliance with international law. It is shown that military

operations mounted without a United Nations Security Council mandate lack legitimacy. Never-

theless, the EU has so far abstained from making any explicit statement that EU-led military opera-

tions would require a UNSC mandate. The deliberate ambivalence of ESDP as regards such a man-

date has weakened the robustness of this fourth pillar of legitimacy.  

Taken together, none of the four pillars on which the legitimacy of ESDP rests is very robust. In

particular, none yet appears sufficiently stable to hold in the event of military operations involving

large numbers of casualties.

3

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

4

Introduction

Since 2003, the European Union has become

a  contributor  to  international  peace  mis-
sions. After having taken over the police mission
in Bosnia in January, the EU assumed command
of  some  350  troops  in  the  former  Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia in April and sent a fur-
ther 2,000 to the Bunia region of the Democratic
Republic of Congo in June. On 2 December 2004
the EU took over the command of some 7,000
troops 
in  Bosnia  from  NATO  (formerly
IFOR/SFOR, now Operation Althea).

The  assumption  of  command  of  military
operations by the EU includes assuming respon-
sibility for possible casualties. Thus, decision-
makers in Brussels as well as in national capitals
should be aware of the extent to which EU-led
missions have been supported by European citi-
zens, of the problems that a ‘Europeanisation’ of
security and defence policy raises for democratic
legitimacy,  and  of  how  possible  democratic
deficits could be redressed. Put differently, the
rapid  development  from  the  1999  Helsinki
Headline  Goal  to  the  first  military  operation
warrants  a  discussion  of  ESDP’s  democratic
legitimacy. 

This paper seeks to contribute to the discus-

sion of ESDP’s democratic legitimacy. The major
challenge in doing so is, of course, to define what
‘democratic legitimacy’ means in the context of
ESDP. ‘Legitimacy’ refers to subjective, norma-
tive convictions that usually differ between cul-
tures, and there has been a plurality of demo-
cratic traditions and hence understandings of
democratic  legitimacy  within  the  European
Union. This challenge is well known from the
debate about the EU’s democratic deficit in gen-
eral,  which  may  therefore  serve  as  a  starting
point. Indeed, congruence with the preferences
and expectations of the public and the participa-
tion of parliaments on a national as well as a
European  level  are  three  important  pillars  of
democratic legitimacy in ESDP as well. In addi-
tion, respect for international law will be added
as a fourth pillar. The discussion of the four pil-
lars makes clear that two of these pillars (public
support  and  participation  of  national  parlia-
ments) are weakened as ESDP progresses from a
political project to a defence policy in action.
This underlines the necessity to compensate an
emerging ‘democratic deficit’ by a strengthening
of parliamentary oversight at the European level
and by strict adherence to international law.

1

5

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

6

Democratic legitimacy: a contested concept

A broad  consensus  in  the  European  Union

holds that democratic legitimacy is indis-
pensable in European politics. Thus, countries
applying for membership of the EU must be sta-
ble democracies before the European Council
will open accession negotiations. Once a mem-
ber of the EU, voting rights may be suspended if
democratic norms are systematically violated.
Furthermore, 
‘to  develop  and  consolidate
democracy’ has been an explicit objective of the
Common Foreign and Security Policy.1 If one
takes the EU at its word, therefore, one should
judge EU policies by standards of democratic
legitimacy.

However,  democracy  has  remained  a  con-
tested concept, i.e. it means different things to
different people. A brief look at member states’
constitutions  reveals  a  remarkable  range  of
views on the institutions and procedures that
are  considered  essential  for  ensuring  demo-
cratic legitimacy. For example, the ratification
of changes to the Treaty on European Union
may require the consent of either one or two
chambers of parliament, or may even require a
referendum (the results of which may be either
legally binding or merely consultative). The plu-
rality of democratic institutions and procedures
highlights a fundamental feature of legitimacy,
namely that it refers to beliefs that are subjective
and normative, and therefore differ across cul-
tures and historical periods.

Given the range of views on what is consid-
ered democratically legitimate, the debate on

democracy  in  the  EU  has  moved  away  from
advocating  particular  versions  of  democracy,
and  thus  from  privileging  one  tradition  over
another. What appears more appropriate is to
design a political system that can be considered
democratically legitimate from a broad range of
perspectives  in  different  member  states.  The
challenge then is to combine institutions and
procedures in a way that avoids incompatibili-
ties and deadlock.2

The endeavour of designing a multiply legiti-
mate  European  polity  may  build  upon  three
schools of thought that have been prominent in
the debate on the EU’s democratic legitimacy.
The  most  important  cleavage  between  these
schools  of  thought  concerns  the  question
whether legitimacy is primarily ensured by effec-
tive governance (‘government for the people’ or
‘output legitimacy’) or rather by participatory
procedures  (‘government  by  the  people’  or
‘input legitimacy’). A second cleavage, among
proponents  of  ‘input  legitimacy’,  stems  from
the question of whether participation should be
organised along intergovernmental or suprana-
tional  lines,  i.e.  whether  they  regard  national
societies or a European citizenry as the political
subject:3
(cid:1)
Proponents of output legitimacy argue
that the European Union will be considered
legitimate to the extent that it contributes to
the effective provision of public goods such
as security, wealth or a clean environment.
The  effective  provision  of  what  citizens

1 See Article 11 TEU-N (Treaty on European Union, ‘Nice version’).
2 For this approach, see Christopher Lord and Paul Magnette. ‘E Pluribus Unum? Creative Disagreement about Legitimacy in the EU’, Journal
of Common Market Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, 2004, pp. 183-202.
3 For  the  latter  distinction,  see  Derk  Bienen,  Volker  Rittberger  and  Wolfgang  Wagner,  ‘Democracy  in  the  United  Nations  System.
Cosmopolitan and Communitarian Principles’, in Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin Köhler (eds.), Re-Imagining Political Community.
Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), pp. 287-308.

2

7

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

demand has been considered crucial to the
democratic legitimacy of national democra-
cies.  However, 
interdependence  among
states  and  societies  has  limited  national
governments‘  capacity  to  provide  public
goods unilaterally. Therefore, a Europeanisa-
tion  of  politics  appears  legitimate  to  the
extent that it helps to regain the ability to
provide public advantages/benefits/services
jointly. Fritz Scharpf has been the most pro-
minent representative of this ‘output’ school
of democratic thought.4
(cid:1)
Adherents of ‘intergovernmental input
legitimacy’ consider the ‘output’ of a politi-
cal system less important for democratic legi-
‘input’  into  decision-
timacy  than  the 
making.  From  this  perspective,  a  policy  is
deemed legitimate to the extent that the deci-
sion-making process has been open to parti-
cipation by citizens. Whereas elections are a
key mechanism allowing citizens to partici-
pate in the selection of programmes and per-
sons,  parliament  is  the  key  institution  to
which citizens delegate the competence to
make  laws  and  supervise  their  execution.
Referendums  and  civil  society’s  activities
may  also  add  to  democratic  legitimacy.
According to this perspective, however, the
feasibility of input legitimacy rests on several
prerequisites. Most importantly, democracy
presupposes a shared sense of common iden-
tity among the citizens of a polity. Without
such a common identity, minorities in parti-
cular may experience governance as a subjec-
tion under foreign rule. Adherents of ‘inter-
legitimacy’  consider
governmental  input 

national identities to be the only ones that
have the necessary qualities for democratic
self-governance. As one adherent of ‘intergo-
vernmental  input  legitimacy’  has  pointed
out, national communities are characterised
by common experiences and a joint historical
memory, whereas the European Union lacks
such attributes. As a consequence, democra-
tic legitimacy will remain with the nation-
state for the foreseeable future.5
(cid:1)
Adherents of ‘supranational input legi-
timacy’ share the conviction that participa-
tion by citizens rather than the provision of
public goods is the key to democratic legiti-
macy. However, they do not preclude the pos-
sibility  of  a  common  European  identity.
Adherents  of  ‘supranational  input  legiti-
macy’ point out that national identities are
not simply given but have evolved over long
periods of time. Moreover, national identi-
ties have followed national institution-buil-
ding.6 By implication, the process of Euro-
pean integration may lead to a weakening of
national identity and a concomitant streng-
thening  of  a  European  identity.  Since  the
nation-state has become too small for demo-
cratic self-governance, they maintain, supra-
national institutions are not only an expres-
sion of an emerging European citizenry but
may even foster or generate a common Euro-
pean identity. To adherents of ‘supranatio-
nal input legitimacy’, the European Parlia-
ment is the most important institution in
this respect because it represents a European
citizenry  and  its  workings  are  organised
along ideological instead of national lines.7

4 Among many other contributions, see Fritz Scharpf, Governing in Europe. Effective and Democratic? (Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press,
1999).
5 This approach has been particularly prominent in the German debate on the EU’s democratic deficit. Prominent adherents include the
Federal Constitutional Court’s former judge Dieter Grimm, who had a strong influence on the 1993 ruling on the Maastricht Treaty. See
Dieter  Grimm,  ‘Does  Europe  Need  A  Constitution?’,  European Law Journal,  no.  1,  1995,  pp.  278-80.  See  also  Peter  Graf  Kielmannsegg,
‘Integration und Demokratie’, in Beate Kohler-Koch and Markus Jachtenfuchs (eds.), Europäische Integration (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1996),
pp. 47-72, as well as Anthony D. Smith, ‘National Identity and the idea of European Unity’, International Affairs, vol. 68, no. 1, 1992, pp. 55-
76.
6 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
7 Prominent adherents of ‘supranational input legitimacy’ include Jürgen Habermas. See his ‘Staatsbürgerschaft und nationale Identität’,
in Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 632-60.

8

Democratic legitimacy: a contested concept

These three approaches have been the most
influential in the debate on the EU’s democratic
legitimacy.  Among  adherents  of  input-legiti-
macy, the possible role of the EU level has been a
matter of contention. Moreover, the trade-off

between the effective provision of public advan-
tages/benefits/services, on the one hand, and
adherence to participatory procedures, on the
other, has been widely debated in both academia
and European politics.

9

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

10

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

Security and defence policy poses a particular

challenge  to  both  democratic  theory  and
practice.  Because  its  functioning  is  based  on
command, obedience and secrecy, the military
logic is very different from the public and delib-
erative  decision-making  that  characterises
democracies. The EU already experienced such
problems of compatibility when ESDP led to a
new category of ‘secret documents’ that has to
be  exempt  from  the  prevailing  policy  of
transparency.

Notwithstanding  these  peculiarities,  the
three schools of thought apply to security and
defence as well, and are the bases of the pillars of
the EU’s legitimacy. They therefore serve as a
point of departure for the following discussion.8
Conformity to international law will be added as
a fourth pillar of democratic legitimacy that dis-
tinguishes security and defence from other issue
areas in the European Union. The ensuing para-
graphs  assess  the  extent  to  which  ESDP  as  it
stands can be considered democratically legiti-
mate from these four perspectives and discuss
options for enhancing democratic legitimacy. 

3.1 ESDP and public support

From the early days of the European Communi-
ties,  the  effective  provision  of  public  advan-
tages/benefits/services played a prominent role
in  conferring  democratic  legitimacy  on  the
process  of  European  integration.  The  Euro-

peanisation of commodity markets or environ-
mental protection was considered democrati-
cally  legitimate  and  received  broad  support
because a majority of citizens demanded com-
petitive  industries,  a  clean  environment,  etc.,
and because interdependence rendered national
policies  increasingly  incapable  of  providing
these public goods. 
European  integration  may  also  enhance  the
effectiveness of security and defence policy.9 The
armaments  market 
characterised  by
economies of scale because research and devel-
opment as well as procurement are extremely
expensive. Standardisation and harmonisation
of  military  equipment  can  therefore  increase
value  for  money  significantly.  Moreover,  role
specialisation can help to avoid expensive dupli-
cation. Finally, a European security and defence
policy  may  contribute  to  burden-sharing
among the member states during peace support
missions,  thereby  avoiding  undersupply  as  a
consequence of free-riding.

is 

Instead of trying to assess the extent to which
European integration contributes to effective
security and defence, we may inquire directly
whether  a  Europeanisation  of  security  and
defence has been supported or even demanded
by the citizens of the European Union. This can
be done by analysing public opinion data.

Since the Danish voters rejected the Maas-
tricht Treaty in a referendum in 1992, public
opinion  has  been  taken  more  seriously  as  an
indicator of democratic legitimacy. Until then,

8 A different approach is taken by Martin Ortega, ‘Military intervention and the European Union’, Chaillot Paper 45 (Paris: Institute for
Security  Studies  of  WEU,  2001).  Ortega  defines  legitimacy  as  ‘the  general  conviction  among  a  distinct  majority  of  the  international
community that the use of armed force is correct and acceptable’ (p. 37). He then goes on to identify the academic community, public
opinion, media and NGOs, individual states, state consensus, and international organisations (most importantly the UN Security Council)
as distinct building blocks of legitimacy. In order to be legitimate, the use of armed force has to be accepted by these international actors.
Whereas Ortega is concerned with legitimacy as such, the focus of this study will be on democratic legitimacy in particular.
9 See Burkard Schmitt, ‘The European Union and armaments. Getting a bigger bang for the Euro’, Chaillot Paper 63 (Paris: EU Institute for
Security Studies, 2003).

3

11

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

the notion of a ‘permissive consensus’10 was fre-
quently used to characterise the indifferent but
benevolent attitude of the public vis-à-vis the
élites’  efforts  to  foster  European  integration.
The Danish rejection of the Maastricht Treaty
caught many by surprise and demonstrated that
the politics of European integration could no
longer flourish without popular support. It is
worth noting that security and defence already
played  a  part  in  the  Danish  referendums  of
1992: only after Denmark had been granted an
opt-out from Economic and Monetary Union
and from security and defence policy did the
Danish people accept the Maastricht Treaty in a
second referendum. 

However, the interpretation of public opin-
ion data has to take account of a number of dif-
ficulties.  First,  the  wording  of  questions  can
have a tremendous impact on the resultant dis-
tribution of answers. For example, during the
late 1960s and early 1970s, surveys that used the
word  ‘communist’  to  portray  the  Vietcong
found greater support for the American war in
Vietnam  than  polls  that  did  not  describe  the
Vietcong as ‘communist’.

Second,  results  are  influenced  by  the
response categories among which respondents
are  asked  to  select.  Many  surveys  prefer
‘either/or’ questions because clients are usually
interested in support for specific projects and
indifferent
for  undecided  or 
care 
responses.  Therefore,  results  from  either/or
questions obscure the extent to which respon-
dents  may  have  no  particular  attitude  at  all.
Thus, if a middle position is included, the result
may change dramatically.

little 

Third, polls often mirror current events and
thereby overemphasise temporary opinions and
fail to reflect stable, long-term attitudes. This
makes it difficult to draw inferences on such

attitudes from a single poll. For example, a low
percentage of respondents expressing trust in
the European Commission when it resigned en
masse in 1999 did not imply a lack of support for
a general strengthening of the Commission. 

Finally, all the distortions just enumerated
are  all  the  more  serious  the  less  respondents
know  about  the  subject  under  consideration
and the less they are interested in it.

Given  these  methodological  difficulties,
opinion polls should generally be interpreted
with  great  caution.  More  specifically,  one
should hesitate to compare results from differ-
ent  polls  which  have  used  different  question
wordings  and  possible  response  categories.
Unfortunately, there are very few polls which
regularly put the very same questions to a high
number of respondents. Fortunately, the Euro-
pean Commission’s ‘Eurobarometer’ is among
the few surveys which fulfil these criteria. 

Whether the methodological difficulties are
particularly prevalent in foreign, security and
defence policies has been a matter of debate. On
the one side, foreign, security and defence policy
are regarded as having few tangible effects on
the everyday life of citizens. As a consequence,
interviewees usually devote little attention to
these policies and are ill-informed about inter-
national  affairs.  On  the  other,  the  process  of
globalisation  has  blurred  the  boundaries
between  the  realms  of  domestic  and  interna-
tional politics. As a result of an expansion of
higher education and media coverage, citizens
have  become  better  informed  about  interna-
tional affairs. 

The notion that security and defence policy
has little effect on ordinary citizens’ lives cer-
tainly does not apply to the large-scale use of
military force, when governments may even ask
their citizens to risk their lives on the battlefield.

10 The term ‘permissive consensus’ was coined by V. O. Key and popularised for European integration research by Leon Lindberg and Stuart
Scheingold to describe the indifferent attitude in EC member states as regards the efforts of élites to foster European integration. See V. O.
Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1961), and Leon N. Lindberg and Stuart A. Scheingold, Europe’s Would-Be Polity.
Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,  1970), p. 41.

12

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

Although a government’s popularity may often
rise when the use of military force is ordered (the
‘rally around the flag’ effect11), it declines again
with the number of casualties suffered.12

These findings demonstrate that EU-led mil-
itary missions may have a tremendous impact
on the democratic legitimacy of the EU. On the
one  hand,  a  successful  defence  of  European
interests and values by military means may give
a boost to the popularity of European integra-
tion. On the other hand, large numbers of casu-
alties may severely damage the democratic legit-
imacy of European institutions. 

It should be noted that the polls that are dis-
cussed below do not refer to a European security
and defence policy ‘in action’ but to a European
security and defence policy as a project of Euro-
pean integration. Most of the polls have been
ordered  by  the  Commission  of  the  European
Communities and published by Eurobarometer
twice  a  year.  Eurobarometer  is  well-suited  to
comparing public opinion across member states
and  over  longer  periods  of  time  because  the
same wording is used in all member countries
and – with minor exceptions – in each survey.

Since  1989,  Eurobarometer  has  regularly
examined the ‘support for key issues’ of Euro-
pean integration, including ‘a common defence
and security policy’ (see Table 1). In the entire
period from 1989 to 2003, large majorities have

voiced support for a common defence and secu-
rity  policy:  on  average,  ESDP  has  been  sup-
ported by 71.6 per cent. The lowest rate was 60
per cent in spring 1996, the highest 79 per cent
in  autumn  1994.  Only  between  12  per  cent
(autumn 1994) and 26 per cent (spring 1996) of
the interviewees said they were against a com-
mon  defence  and  security  policy.13 Thus,  net
support  has  ranged  between  34  and  62  per
cent.14

Support for a European security and defence
policy  drops  when  interviewees  are  asked  to
choose between national and European defence.
Again since 1989, Eurobarometer regularly asks
respondents  whether  they  prefer  ‘national  or
joint decision-making’ in a wide range of issue
areas.15 A European security and defence policy
still receives net support, the margin is smaller,
namely  4.5  per  cent  on  average  (see  Table  2),
occasionally (as in autumn 1993, spring 1999
and autumn 2000), supporters of national secu-
rity and defence even outnumber those of Euro-
pean  security  and  defence  policy.  Compared
with other issue areas for which Eurobarometer
examines attitudes on European decision-mak-
ing, defence has received medium levels of sup-
port.16 The lowest levels of support for Euro-
pean decision-making have been recorded for
issue areas that have an impact on individual
rights and standards of living or on culture and

11 See Kenneth Waltz, ‘Electoral Punishment and Foreign Policy Crisis’, in James Rosenau (ed.), Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York:
Free Press, 1967), pp. 263-93; and J. E. Mueller. ‘Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson.’, American Political Science Review, vol. 64,
no. 1, 1970, pp. 18-34. Oneal, Lian and Joyner demonstrated that the timing of a military escalation as well as media coverage have an
impact on government popularity; see John R. Oneal, Brad Lian and James H. Joyner, Jr., ‘Are the American People “Pretty Prudent”? Public
Responses to U.S. Uses of Force, 1950–1988’, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 40, 1996, pp. 261-76.
12 See John Mueller. War, Presidents and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973) as well as John Mueller, Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994) and Scott S. Gartner, Gary M. Segura and Michael Wilkening, ‘All Politics Are Local. Local
Losses and Individual Attitudes Toward the Vietnam War’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 41, no. 5, 1997, pp. 669-94.
13 The low support rate in early 1996 probably results from the Dayton accord in December 1995 that brought an end to the Bosnian war
and demonstrated the value of NATO for European security.
14 Net  support  refers  to  the  number  of  supporters  minus  the  number  of  opponents.  See  Oskar  Niedermayer,  ‘Die  Entwicklung  der
öffentlichen Meinung zu Europa’, in Mathias Jopp, Andreas Maurer and Heinrich Schneider (eds.), Europapolitische Grundverständnisse im
Wandel. Analysen und Konsequenzen für die politische Bildung (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1998), pp. 419-48.
15 The exact wording is: ‘Some people believe that certain areas of policy should be decided by the (NATIONAL) government, while other
areas of policy should be decided jointly within the European Union. Which of the following areas of policy do you think should be decided
by the (NATIONAL) government, and which should be decided jointly within the European Union?’
16 For the following, see Russel J. Dalton and Richard C. Eichenberg. ‘Citizen Support for Policy Integration’, in Wayne Sandholtz and Alec
Stone Sweet (eds.), European Integration and Supranational Governance (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 250-82, pp. 259-
60.

13

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

identity; the highest have been recorded for typ-
ical  problems  of  interdependence  (such  as 
environmental protection and migration) and
external policies (such as development aid and
diplomacy). It is important to note that respon-
dents have distinguished between ‘defence’ and
‘foreign  policy’.  This  distinction  again  illus-
trates  that  decision-making  in  defence  may
result in tangible effects on ordinary citizens‘
life.

The question concerning ‘national or joint
decision-making’  also  illustrates  one  of  the
methodological  problems  mentioned  above,
namely  that  the  wording  of  questions  and
response categories affects the distribution of
responses. In the spring of 1996, interviewees
were not compelled to choose between either
‘national decision-making’ or ‘joint European
decision-making’.  In  addition  to  these  two
response  categories,  ‘both  national  as  well  as
European decision-making’ was offered as a fur-
ther possible response. Immediately, 39 per cent
of those questioned chose this middle position.
At the same time, support for European deci-
sion-making in defence collapsed from 52 per
cent to 29 per cent whereas, 27 per cent preferred
national decision-making. Yet another distribu-
tion can be found in a special Eurobarometer
survey of November/December 2000 that sug-
gested ‘NATO’ as an additional category. In this
survey, 43 per cent opted for the EU, 24 per cent
for national governments, and 17 per cent for
NATO.17 As mentioned above, these distorting
effects are the stronger, the less interviewees are
acquainted with the topic in question and there-
fore prefer to avoid extreme positions. Richard

Sinnott therefore assumes that there has been a
high proportion of ‘non-attitudes’ in defence
policy.18

In  the  special  ‘Eurobarometer’  survey  of
November/December  2000,  one  question
referred to the European Rapid Reaction Force
as envisioned at the Helsinki European Council
in 1999.19 Nearly three out of four respondents
supported  that  project  and  only  14  per  cent
opposed it. As to the type of European army,
37 per cent opted for a ‘permanent European
Rapid Reaction Force in addition to national
armies’, 19 per cent preferred ‘one single Euro-
pean army that would replace national armies’,
18 per cent demanded a ‘European Rapid Reac-
tion Force that would be put together only when
needed’ and 12 per cent wanted ‘no European
army, but only national armies’. A further ques-
tion  concerned  possible  roles  of  a  European
army.20 Here, respondents considered ‘defend-
ing the territory of the EU’ to be the most impor-
tant task (mentioned by 71 per cent); ‘defending
human  rights’  (51  per  cent)  ranked  behind
‘guaranteeing peace in the EU’ (63 per cent) and
‘intervening  in  case  of  a  disaster  in  Europe’
(58 per cent). Only 44 per cent thought that a
European army should intervene ‘in conflicts on
the EU borders’ and only 18 per cent wanted a
European  army  to  intervene  ‘in  conflicts  in
other parts of the world’.

Finally,  the  special  Eurobarometer  poll
inquired  into  the  preferred  decision-making
mechanism  in  the  event  of  military  interven-
tion.21 The most frequent response (47 per cent)
was that decisions should be made ‘only by the
governments of the countries which are willing

17 Philippe Manigart. Public Opinion and European Defense (Belgium: Royal Military Academy, 2001), p. 11.
18 Richard Sinnott. ‘European Public Opinion and Security Policy’, Chaillot Paper 28 (Paris: Institute for Security Studies of WEU, 1997),
p. 39. The concept of ‘non-attitudes’ was introduced by Philip Converse, who was puzzled by the fact that responses to different questions
were  frequently  contradictory.  Converse  argued  that  many  interviewees  had  no  attitude  at  all  and  responded  randomly.  See  Philip  E.
Converse, ‘Attitudes and Non-Attitudes: Continuation of a Dialogue’, in Edward Tufte (ed.), The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems, Reading
(Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1970), pp. 168-89.
19 The precise question wording was: ‘Recently, the EU has decided to set up a rapid reaction force of 60,000 men. Personally, do you believe
it is a very good thing, a rather good thing, a rather bad thing, or a very bad thing?’
20 The precise question wording was: ‘The European Union has decided to institute a common security and defence policy. Among the
following possible functions of a European army, for what, in your opinion, should it be used?’
21 The precise question wording was: ‘Let us suppose that a decision in principle is being taken to send troops within the framework of a
crisis outside the EU. In that case, who should take the decision?’

14

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

to  send  troops’,  11  per  cent  opted  for  unani-
mous  voting,  whereas  17  per  cent  preferred
‘majority voting, keeping the right for each state
not  to  send  troops’.  Only  7  per  cent  were  in
favour of ‘majority voting, forcing each state to
send troops’.

Taken together, the various surveys reflect
broad  support  for  the  project  of  a  European
security  and  defence  policy  and  a  European
Rapid Reaction Force. Moreover, the data avail-
able for the ten new member countries indicate
that this support is found in Central and East-
ern Europe as well.22 According to these surveys,
the further integration of security and defence
policy is democratically legitimate in the sense
that  this  concurs  with  the  preferences  of  a
majority of European citizens. 

However, three caveats are in order. First, the
survey  results  heavily  depend  on  the  precise
wording of questions and response categories.
This dependence not only illustrates the general
methodological difficulties in polling but indi-
cates little acquaintance with European security
and defence policy. Because interviewees are not
well  informed  about  European  security  and
defence policy, their responses are heavily influ-
enced by the precise wording of questions and
response categories. 

Second, almost all questions have referred to
European security and defence policy as a politi-
cal project. It would therefore be premature to
conclude that citizens are prepared to bear the
costs of that project. Support for security and
defence frequently drops if linked to an increas-
ing defence budget.23 This effect is evident in a
recent poll on transatlantic trends that was car-
ried out in nine EU member states (France, Ger-
many, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Nether-
lands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Slovakia).24
Whereas 71 per cent of interviewees endorsed
the  statement  that  the  ‘EU  should  become  a
superpower like the US’, only 48 per cent sup-
ported such an endeavour ‘even if this implies

greater military expenditures’. It is even more
difficult to assess how support for a European
security and defence policy would be affected by
successes and failures of EU-led military mis-
sions. 

Third, support for a European security and
defence policy is distributed unevenly across the
member states. For example, the percentage of
respondents who prefer European over national
decision-making has been significantly higher
in Italy or Germany than in Ireland or Sweden
(see Table 3). In the latter two states as well as in
the United Kingdom, a majority of interviewees
even  favour  national  decision-making 
in
defence. A combination of factors may account
for these differences: Ireland and Sweden have a
long tradition of neutrality, which raises prob-
lems  of  compatibility  with  the  EU’s  defence
efforts. For the United Kingdom (as well as for
Denmark),  a  strong  affiliation  to  the  United
States and NATO has led to similar concerns. In
contrast,  Italy  and  Germany  have  been  long-
standing champions of a federal Europe which,
by definition, would include a common security
and defence policy. It is important to note that
these different traditions or ‘national identities’
have  been  rather  stable  –  notwithstanding
changes in the security agenda and redefinitions
of  what  ‘neutrality’  or  ‘federalism’  refers  to.
Tables 4 and 5 show the highest and the lowest
levels of support for a European defence policy.
The tables show that there has been almost no
convergence of attitudes among West European
societies. As a consequence, support for a Euro-
pean security and defence policy has been frag-
mented along member state lines and is likely to
remain so for the foreseeable future. 

In  sum,  the  term  ‘permissive  consensus’
seems to aptly describe the situation in security
and  defence  policy.  Citizens  in  EU  member
states have, by and large, had a benevolent atti-
tude  vis-à-vis  ESDP.  It  is  important  to  note,
however, that such an attitude towards ESDP as

22 In candidate countries Eurobarometer polls have been carried out since 2001.
23 Franz Kernic, Jean Callaghan and Philippe Manigart, Public opinion on European security and defense. A survey of European trends and public attitudes
toward CFSP and ESDP (Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 2002), p. 24.
24Results  are  available  at  http://www.transatlantictrends.org/apps/gmf/ttweb2004.nsf/0/461EA7D25CC77DA185256F020059C76D/
$file/Topline+with+logo+f[RTF bookmark start: }_Hlt90347133i[RTF bookmark end: }_Hlt90347133nal.pdf (accessed December 2004).

15

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

a  project  does  not  necessarily  extend  to  a 
European defence policy ‘in practice’. From the
perspective  of  output  legitimacy,  the  deploy-
ment  of  European  troops  therefore  involves
considerable risks. While a successful mission
may give a boost to democratic legitimacy, fail-
ure  and/or  large  numbers  of  casualties  may
heavily damage the legitimacy of ESDP and the
EU more generally. 

3.2 ESDP and national
democracy
The previous section has shown that ESDP has
been supported by citizens across the EU but
that this support does not appear to be stable
enough to hold in cases of failed missions. As a
consequence, the overall democratic legitimacy
of ESDP should not be based on output legiti-
macy alone but needs to be supplemented by
input legitimacy. Thus, decision-makers should
be accountable to the citizens and their repre-
sentatives,  and  the  decision-making  process
should be open to participation by them. To be
sure, general elections are a key mechanism for
holding  governments  accountable  for  their
decisions.  Moreover,  the  institutions  of  civil
society  such  as  non-governmental  organisa-
tions (NGOs) may contribute to the articulation
of citizens’ concerns. However, as all EU member
states  are  representative  democracies,  parlia-
ments have remained the key players for adher-
ents of input legitimacy. According to Heiner
Hänggi,  ‘parliaments  are  the  central  locus  of
accountability for any governmental decision-

making concerning the use of force’.25

Although all EU member states are democra-
cies, there have been a multitude of different
democratic  traditions  among  them.  This  has
been particularly apparent with regard to the
role of parliaments in security and defence poli-
tics. In a groundbreaking study at the Geneva
Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed
Forces (DCAF), three factors determining the
effectiveness  of  parliamentary  accountability
have been distinguished:26 ‘Authority’ refers to
‘the power which parliament uses to hold gov-
ernment  accountable’  and  which  is  ‘derived
from the constitutional and legal framework as
well as customary practices’. ‘Ability’ denotes
the resources, such as specialised committees,
budget and staff, which are necessary to make
effective use of the authority conferred upon
parliament. Finally, ‘attitude’ refers to the ‘will-
ingness to hold the executive to account’ which,
among other things, depends on the extent to
which legislative-executive relations are charac-
terised by party discipline.27 Although each of
these factors has had an influence on the effec-
tiveness  of  parliamentary  accountability,  the
authors of the DCAF study conclude that ‘the
strongest means of parliamentary oversight by
far  is  .  .  .  the  constitutional  or  legal  right  to
approve or reject such use of force.’28 In con-
trast, budget and staff are certainly indispensa-
ble in making use of legal authority but they
reflect rather than cause legal powers.

The  parliaments  of  member  states  differ
vastly as regards their involvement in decision-
making on the use of force.29 In former colonial
powers,  governments  are  usually  allowed  to

25 Heiner Hänggi. ‘The Use of Force Under International Auspices: Parliamentary Accountability and “Democratic Deficits” ’, in Hans Born
and Heiner Hänggi (eds.), The ‘Double Democratic Deficit’. Parliamentary Accountability and the Use of Force Under International Auspices (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2004), pp. 3-16, quote from p. 11.
26 Ibid.
27 All quotes from Hans Born, in ibid., pp. 203-15, quotes from pp. 209-11.
28 Hänggi, op. cit., p. 14. See also ibid., p. 211.
29 In addition to the volume by Hans Born and Heiner Hänggi, a good overview has been given in Assembly of the Western European Union,
The Interim European Security and Defence Assembly, National Parliamentary Scrutiny of Intervention Abroad by Armed Forces Engaged in
International Missions: The Current Position in Law (Doc. A/1762), Paris, 2001. This report covers all then EU members except for Ireland
and Austria. Parliamentary competencies in Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Poland are further treated in Jürgen
Mittag, The Parliamentary Dimension of CFSP/ESDP. Options for the European Convention (Brussels/Cologne, 2003). Alexander Siedschlag, ‘Nationale
Entscheidungsprozesse bei Streitkräfteeinsätzen im Rahmen der Petersberg-Aufgaben der EU – Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien,
Italien,  Schweden’,  in  Erich  Reiter,  Reinhardt  Rummel  and  Peter  Schmidt  (eds.),  Europas  ferne  Streitmacht.  Chancen  und  Schwierigkeiten  der
Europäischen Union beim Aufbau der ESVP (Forschungen zur Sicherheitspolitik 6) (Hamburg et al.: Mittler, 2002), pp. 222-32.

16

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

deploy  troops  without  the  consent  of  parlia-
ment. For example, the governments in France
and the United Kingdom decided to participate
in NATO air strikes against Serbian targets in
1999 without consulting their respective parlia-
ments.  In  a  similar  vein,  no  parliamentary
approval is required in Spain or Belgium.

In contrast, parliament’s consent prior to a
deployment of troops has been required in Ger-
many, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland.
In Italy and the Netherlands, governments have
regarded parliamentary approval as indispensa-
ble, although there has been no constitutional
requirement to do so. However, in some of these
countries, the law regarding deployment pro-
vides for exceptions from and modifications of
the general rule of parliamentary approval. In
Austria, parliament has delegated its right to
approve or disapprove of military deployments
to  a  standing  committee  (Hauptausschuss  des
Nationalrates) which has participated in the exer-
cise  of  various  executive  tasks.  Moreover,  the
government may deploy troops without parlia-
mentary  approval  if  time  does  not  allow  for
prior consultation. In this case, a debate must be
held  within  15  days.  If  parliament  does  not
endorse the deployment, the troops have to be
ordered back. 

Yet another exemption from general parlia-
mentary approval can be found in Sweden. Here,
the  government  may  deploy  troops  without
consulting parliament if the deployment takes
place within the framework of multilateral secu-
rity  institutions.  In  particular,  deployments
based on a ‘standby agreement’ as provided by
Art. 43 of the UN Charter do not require the con-
sent  of  the  Riksdag.  Similarly,  deployments
based  on  international  agreements  that  have
been endorsed by parliament are exempt from
further approval. In Ireland, there has been still

another exemption from general parliamentary
approval  for  deployments  consisting  of  less
than twelve armed soldiers.

This brief survey of deployment law under-
lines the differences among EU member states
with regard to parliament’s role in security and
defence policy. Put differently, there has been no
common understanding of national input legit-
imacy between, e.g. Sweden and France, or Ger-
many  and  the  United  Kingdom.  As  a  conse-
quence,  it  is  impossible  to  demand  common
minimum standards or to give general recom-
mendations for parliamentary participation in
decisions on deployment. In contrast, the varia-
tions  inherent  in  national  input  legitimacy
imply that a EU-led mission can be considered
democratically  legitimate  if  the  respective
national standards have been adhered to in each
of the contributing states. Whereas the adher-
ence to standards of parliamentary involvement
will hardly cause any problems in those member
states with fairly low standards of parliamentary
participation, members with higher standards
assume a key role in the overall process.

The most important consequence of varying
national standards of parliamentary participa-
tion is that EU-level decisions on the use of mili-
tary force have to be taken unanimously. The
adherence to standards of parliamentary partic-
ipation in each member state would be severely
undermined if decisions were taken by (quali-
fied) majority voting, because national parlia-
ments  could  no  longer  prevent  their  govern-
ments from participating in a military mission.
However, demanding national standards of par-
liamentary  involvement  can  also  be  under-
mined by the integration of military forces on an
international level.30 If forces have been inte-
grated, any state’s decision not to participate in
a mission de facto frustrates the entire deploy-

30 Respective concerns have been voiced, among others, by Hartwig Hummel, ‘Die Europäische Union und der ‘demokratische Friede’: Zur
parlamentarischen Kontrolle der Europäischen Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik’, in Peter Schlotter (ed.), Europa – Macht – Frieden? Zur
Politik der ‚Zivilmacht Europa’ (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003), pp. 159-78; and by Giovanna Bono, ‘The European Union as an International
Security Actor: Challenges for Democratic Accountability’, in Hans Born and Heiner Hänggi (eds.), op. cit., pp. 163-81. Matthias Koenig-
Archibugi has even argued that the disentanglement from parliamentary control has been an important driving force for EU governments
to advocate a Europeanisation of foreign, security and defence policy. See Matthias Koenig-Archibugi. ‘International Governance as New
Raison d’État? The Case of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy’, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 10, no. 2, 2004,
pp. 147-88. It should be noted, however, that national parliaments may be weakened as regards decision-making on the use of force but
that they retain another important instrument of control, namely the ‘power of the purse’, because parliaments have to endorse military
spending.

17

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

ment, because other states’ forces cannot work
effectively without the missing state’s contribu-
tion. As a consequence, states whose forces have
been integrated on an international level may
come  under  heavy  peer  pressure  from  those
states that advocate the use of the joint forces.

Since the end of the Cold War, EU member
states have faced strong incentives to integrate
their military forces. Firstly, shrinking defence
budgets in all member states have made their
efficient  spending  more  pressing.  Member
states have therefore been more prepared to par-
ticipate  in  joint  armaments  projects  and  to
engage in role specialisation in order to obtain
greater value for money. Furthermore, the inte-
gration of military forces has been promoted for
political reasons. With the common threat to
Western Europe’s security disappearing, experts
and decision-makers across Europe have been
concerned about a renationalisation of security
and defence policies. The integration of military
structures has been a powerful instrument to
give credibility to the commitment to prevent
renationalisation.

The extent to which the integration of mili-
tary forces undermines national standards of
parliamentary  control  varies  significantly
between  EU  member  states.  The  effect  is,  of
course, most pronounced in those with the most
demanding standards of parliamentary involve-
ment.  Germany  provides  a  particularly  good
illustration of the conflicting demands of mili-
tary integration, on the one hand, and parlia-
mentary control, on the other. As a consequence
of two World Wars and the involvement of the
Wehrmacht in Nazi crimes, Germany has been a
champion of both multilateralism and antimili-
tarism.31 Since the fierce debate over rearma-

ment in the 1950s, a reluctance to use military
force  and  a  commitment  to  multilateralism
have become prime pillars of postwar German
security policy. However, since the end of the
Cold War and the growing number of peace sup-
port operations out of area, tensions between
these two principles have mounted. As the EU
has only recently become an actor in security
and  defence  policy,  the  major  conflicts  have
been experienced within NATO. However, simi-
lar conflicts are likely to arise if the EU assumes
a more prominent role in military missions.

Immediately after the Cold War, participa-
tion by the Bundeswehr in out-of-area missions
was  widely  opposed  in  Germany.  Indeed,  the
German  government  refrained  from  sending
the Bundeswehr to the Persian Gulf in 1990/91.
At the time of that crisis, German politicians
were eager to demonstrate the country’s peace-
able nature and were ‘surprised that the USA
and Israel, among others, condemned Germany
for not contributing militarily against Iraq’.32
German decision-makers had to realise that the
NATO partners now expected Germany, as an
ally, to make a substantial contribution to non-
Article 5 operations.33 Moreover, they realised
that  ‘similar  behaviour  in  a  future  conflict
would probably result in a crisis with its major
allies’.34 From then on, German governments
aimed at overcoming the antimilitarist culture
as  an  obstacle  to  the  deployment  of  the  Bun-
deswehr out of area. For this purpose, ‘reliability
as  an  ally’  and  ‘alliance  solidarity’  became
prominent  arguments  in  the  German  debate
over out-of-area-missions.35 These arguments
were buttressed by references to integrated force
structures  of  which  the  Bundeswehr had  been
part. References to Germany’s participation in

31 Among  many  others,  see  Hanns  Maull,  ‘Germany  and  the  Use  of  Force:  Still  a  Civilian  Power?’,  Survival,  vol.  42,  no.  2,  pp.  56-80,
particularly  pp.  66-8.  Thomas  U.  Berger.  Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore,  Md.:  Johns  Hopkins
University Press, 1998), and Jeffrey J. Anderson and John B. Goodman, ‘Mars or Minerva? A United Germany in a Post-Cold War Europe’,
in  R.  O.  Keohane,  J.  S.  Nye  and  S.  Hoffmann  (eds.),  After  the  Cold  War.  International  Institutions  and  State  Strategies  in  Europe,  1989-1991
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 23-62.
32 N. Philippi, ‘Civilian Power and War: The German Debate About Out-Of-Area Operations 1990-99’, in S. Harnisch and H. Maull (eds.),
Germany as a Civilian Power? The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 51.
33 Rainer Baumann, ‘German Security Policy Within NATO’, in Volker Rittberger (ed.), German Foreign Policy Since Unification. Theories and Case
Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 166.
34 Philippi, op. cit., p. 51.
35 See Michael Schwab-Trapp, Kriegsdiskurse. Die politische Kultur des Krieges im Wandel 1991-1999 (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 2002).

18

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

NATO’s Airborne Warning and Control System
(AWACS) illustrate this point: AWACS has been
designed  to  recognise  enemy  aircraft  over  a
given territory, most importantly in the event of
an attack. In addition to this defensive function,
it has an offensive function, namely to help iden-
tifying and selecting targets for air strikes. In
1993, NATO offered its AWACS fleet to enforce
the  no-fly  zone  over  Bosnia  that  the  United
Nations Security Council had agreed on. The
German government’s decision not to withdraw
Bundeswehr personnel from AWACS met consid-
erable criticism from the opposition and even
from within the governing coalition. Thus, in
early  1993,  the  Federal  Constitutional  Court
(FCC)  had  to  give  a  preliminary  ruling  on
whether, as the opposition argued, the partici-
pation of the Bundeswehr violated the German
constitution.36

By a narrow margin of five votes to three, the
FCC  endorsed  the  Government’s  decision  to
allow the Bundeswehr to participate in AWACS
missions over Bosnia. Concerns about Alliance
solidarity and reliability played a decisive role in
its ruling. The Court noted that the Bundeswehr
provided around 30 per cent of AWACS person-
nel. As a consequence, a withdrawal of German
soldiers at the time of this mission would have
jeopardised the enforcement of the no-fly zone
over Bosnia. Furthermore, ‘allies and European
neighbours would inevitably lose trust in Ger-
man  policy;  the  resulting  damage  would  be
irreparable’.37 Thus, the fact that the Bundeswehr
participated in an integrated military structure
played a decisive role in legitimising Germany’s
first  combat  (in  contrast  to  humanitarian  or
peacekeeping) mission out of area. Since then,

the scope of Germany’s contribution to out-of-
area missions has grown continually.38

In  the  final  ruling  of  July  1994,  the  FCC
affirmed the principle that any deployment of
the Bundeswehr must have prior parliamentary
approval. According to the FCC, the use of the
armed forces is not within the executive’s sole
discretion but, as a ‘parliamentary army’, part of
the democratic constitutional order. However,
the principle of prior parliamentary approval is
circumscribed in two cases:

The Bundestag’s participation in particular
decisions on the use of force that the consti-
tution  stipulates  must  not  damage 
Germany’s capability to defend itself and to
make alliance commitments.39

Since the FCC’s ruling, the Bundestag has
dealt with more than 40 deployments of the Bun-
deswehr (including the prolongation and exten-
sion of missions).40 However, this practice has
again  come  under  pressure  since  NATO’s
Prague  summit  decided  to  set  up  a  multina-
tional ‘Response Force’ that could be deployed
for the most demanding peace support missions
within a few days. The deployment of the NATO
Response  Force  (NRF)  was  simulated  at  an
informal NATO summit in Colorado Springs in
October 2003. It soon became clear that a rapid
deployment  could  be  endangered  by  the
required prior approval of the German parlia-
ment. As with AWACS, German troops would
play an essential role in the NRF. In contrast to
AWACS,  however,  even  a  belated  ‘green  light’
would  possibly  cause  problems.  As  a  conse-
quence, German Defence Minister Peter Struck
immediately  launched  a  debate  on  reform  of

36 After  a  previous  preliminary  ruling  on  German  participation  in  monitoring  a  maritime  embargo  against  Yugoslavia  and  a  further
preliminary ruling on the Bundeswehr’s participation in UNOSOM II, the main ruling was made in July 1994 (BverfG E [decisions of the Federal
Constitutional Court], vol. 90, 286, II, pp. 286-394). However, I will focus on the preliminary AWACS ruling, because it was part of the very
decision-making process on Germany’s first combat mission.
37 BverfG E, vol. 88, 173, II, p. 183; author’s translation.
38 For an overview, see Rainer Baumann and Gunther Hellmann, ‘Germany and the Use of Force:  “Total War”, the “Culture of Restraint”,
and the Quest for Normality’, German Politics, vol. 10, no. 1, 2001, pp. 61-82.
39 Author’s translation [‘Die verfassungsrechtlich gebotene Mitwirkung des Bundestages bei konkreten Entscheidungen über den Einsatz
bewaffneter  Streitkräfte  darf  die  militärische  Wehrfähigkeit  und  die  Bündnisfähigkeit  der  Bundesrepublik  Deutschland  nicht
beeinträchtigen.’].
40 Berthold Meyer, Von der Entscheidungsmündigkeit zur Entscheidungsmüdigkeit? Nach zehn Jahren Parlamentsvorbehalt für Bundeswehreinsätze naht ein
Beteiligungsgesetz (Frankfurt a. M.: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, 2004).

19

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

Germany’s parliamentary proviso. Struck’s sug-
gestion  was  supported  by  his  American  col-
league,  Donald  Rumsfeld,  who  urged  NATO
members  ‘to  bring  NATO’s  decision-making
structures  up  to  date  so  that  NATO  military
commanders  can  take  decisive  action  against
fast-moving threats in the 21st century’.41

To be sure, the conflict between the demo-
cratic  control  of  the  armed  forces  and  the
demands of alliance politics are nowhere likely
to  be  as  intense  as  in  Germany,  where  both
demanding standards of parliamentary control
and multinational integration were designed to
prevent a resurgence of militarism. However, the
EU  may  experience  similar  conflicts  to  the
extent that ESDP steps into NATO’s shoes. In
particular, the project of EU ‘battle groups’, i.e.
small,  integrated  multinational  forces  to  be
deployed at short notice, is likely to result in
conflicts  very  similar  to  those  over  the  NRF.
Moreover,  the  EU  comprises  a  few  member
states  that  remained  apart  from  military
alliances during the Cold War. As the brief sur-
vey  of  member  states’  standards  given  above
demonstrates, some of those states (e.g. Austria
and Sweden) have had high standards of parlia-
mentary control similar to those of Germany. 

Therefore, the challenge in setting up a Euro-
pean Rapid Reaction Force (and European bat-
tle  groups  in  particular)  is  to  find  a  balance
between cost-saving role specialisation and an
integration of forces, on the one hand, and a
duplication of capabilities, on the other, that
allows single member states to abstain from EU-
led  missions.  If  certain  capabilities  were  only
available from a single member, its government
and  possibly  its  parliament  would  certainly
come under heavy pressure not to block a joint

mission unilaterally. Thus, the compatibility of
member  states’  political  systems  should  be
taken more seriously into consideration when
composing  multinational  integrated  military
structures.42

Forms of ‘flexible’, ‘enhanced’ or ‘structured’
cooperation also help to mitigate the conflict
between  the  benefits  of  military  cooperation
and the possibility for individual member states
to  ‘opt  out’  from  joint  military  endeavours.
Although ‘opt-outs’ have accompanied various
major projects of European integration (includ-
ing economic and monetary union and Schen-
gen), negative connotations (e.g. ‘Europe à la
carte’ or ‘Europe à deux vitesses’) have prevented
the spread of this instrument. 

Flexibility has become a prominent feature
of European security and defence policy. After
the Danish voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty
in a referendum, Denmark was granted several
opt-outs, including security and defence policy.
The fact that the Danish Folketing has compre-
hensive competencies in that issue area may well
have contributed to this opt-out. Further flexi-
bility resulted from the transfer of operational
tasks from WEU to the EU, as this left ten mem-
ber  states  with  a  commitment  to  mutual
defence. Finally, EU members have participated
in armaments cooperation to varying degrees,
because some members have been among the
world’s largest producers of arms whereas oth-
ers have no significant arms industry at all. As a
consequence, membership of European arma-
ments  institutions  has  been  limited  to  states
with viable industries.43

The ‘Convention on the Future of Europe’44
proposed several institutional reforms designed
to acknowledge member states’ differences in

41 United States Department of Defense, News Transcript, Press Conference with Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and NATO Secretary
General Lord Robertson, Wednesday, 8 October 2003; http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20031008-secdef0746.html (August
2004).
42 See Marc Houben and Dirk Peters, ‘The Deployment of Multinational Military Formations: Taking Political Institutions into Account’,
Policy Brief no. 36 (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, 2003).
43 In November 1996, 10 members of WEU established the Western European Armaments Organisation (WEAO) as a sub-organisation
of WEU. WEAO was tasked with research and development and considered to be a possible precursor of a European Armaments Agency.
Also in 1996, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany founded OCCAR (Organisation Commune de Coopération Pour l’Armament),
based in Bonn. Because OCCAR has legal personality, it has managed joint procurement projects including the Tiger combat helicopter.
44 The ‘Convention on the Future of Europe’ (usually abbreviated to ‘European Convention’) was established by the heads of state or
government in December 2001 in order to elaborate proposals for institutional reform. The Convention was composed of 15 representatives
of  the  heads  of  state  or  government,  30  representatives  of  the  national  parliaments,  16  members  of  the  European  Parliament, 

20

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

security and defence, and to give them a consti-
tutional basis.45 According to Article III-310 of
the  Constitutional  Treaty,  ‘the  Council  may
entrust  the  implementation  of  a  task46 to  a
group of Member States which are willing and
have the necessary capability for such a task.’
However, it is the Council as a whole that will
define the task’s ‘objectives and scope and the
general conditions for their implementation’.
This  provision  provides  reluctant  member
states with an opportunity to opt out of joint
missions while joint decision-making prevents
‘coalitions  of  the  willing’  from  becoming
detached from the other member states. 

Moreover, a protocol to the Constitutional
Treaty defines more demanding military capa-
bilities.47 Those  member  states  that  wish  to
enter into such more demanding commitments
establish ‘permanent structured cooperation’.
Whereas  the  Convention  had  left  it  to  those
members interested in more demanding cooper-
ation to establish ‘structured cooperation’ and
to define the criteria and commitments to be
fulfilled,  the  Intergovernmental  Conference
that followed the Convention gave the Council,
acting on the basis of a qualified majority vote,48
a greater say in these decisions. 

Both provisions aim to give interested mem-
ber states the opportunity to reap the benefits of
military  cooperation  (such  as  role  specialisa-
tion) while giving the more reluctant member
states  the  opportunity  to  ‘opt  out’.  Since
demanding standards of parliamentary control
may  contribute  to  a  more  reluctant  stance
towards security and defence policy, the oppor-

tunity to opt out is a welcome instrument for
preserving national input legitimacy.

3.3 The European Parliament
and ESDP
As demonstrated in the previous section, inter-
dependence and integration in European secu-
rity and defence policy have reached a level that
renders national input alone increasingly inade-
quate in ensuring democratic legitimacy. Even
though unanimity has remained the prime deci-
sion-making  rule,  national  decisions  have  de
facto been pre-formed by European decision-
making to a considerable extent. The general
argument advanced by proponents of suprana-
tional input legitimacy therefore applies to the
realm  of  security  and  defence  policy  as  well.
From this point of view, an additional input at
the European level seems appropriate.

To adherents of supranational ‘input’ legiti-
mation, a strengthening of the European Parlia-
ment (EP) has been the key to enhancing demo-
cratic legitimacy. It would be unrealistic, how-
ever, to expect a strengthening of the EP along
the lines of its competencies in single market
legislation,  where  the  EP  co-decides  with  the
Council. At the same time, the EP has been mar-
ginalised in security and defence policy to such
an extent that ample room for its strengthening
remains. 

Indeed, member states have only hesitantly
endowed the EP with competencies in foreign,
security  and  defence  policy.  In  fact,  the 

2 representatives of the European Commission and a large number of representatives from the candidate countries and observers from other
EU institutions. They met from March 2002 to July 2003. A special working group chaired by Michel Barnier dealt with issues of security
and  defence.  In  July  2003,  the  President  of  the  convention,  Valéry  Giscard  d’Estaing,  presented  a  draft  for  a  ‘treaty  on  a  European
constitution’ to the European Council, which, after making some amendments, adopted the text. The treaty is currently in the process of
ratification.
45 See  Jolyon  Howorth,  ‘The  European  Draft  Constitutional  Treaty  and  the  Future  of  the  European  Defence  Initiative:  A  Question  of
Flexibility’, European Foreign Affairs Review, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 483-508.
46 Here, ‘tasks’ refer to the amended Petersberg tasks, i.e. ‘joint disarmament operations, humanitarian and rescue tasks, military advice
and assistance tasks, conflict prevention and peace-keeping tasks, tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-making
and post-conflict stabilisation. All these tasks may contribute to the fight against terrorism, including by supporting third countries in
combating terrorism in their territories.’ (see Art. III-309).
47 See Protocol no. 23 on permanent structured cooperation established by Articles I-41(6) and III-312 of the Constitution.
48 The thresholds for reaching a decision are raised to 55 per cent of the member states and representing at least 65 per cent of their
population.

21

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

establishment of European Political Coopera-
tion outside the treaties and the establishment
of the Common Foreign and Security Policy as a
distinct pillar of a European Union were prima-
rily driven by a desire to keep the supranational
institutions’ competencies limited. The result
has been what Heiner Hänggi has called a ‘dou-
ble  democratic  deficit’  in  which  ‘the  “demo-
cratic deficits” which exist to a greater or lesser
extent on the national level and the prevalence
of  “democratic  deficits”  on  the  international
level, appear to reinforce each other in worsen-
ing parliamentary accountability of the use of
force under international auspices.’49

While the EP has established itself as an actor
in  foreign  and  security  policy,  ESDP  has
remained aloof from the EP’s involvement. Arti-
cle 21 of the Treaty of Nice obliges the presi-
dency to consult the EP ‘on the main aspects and
the basic choices of the common foreign and
security policy’ and to ‘ensure that the views of
the  European  Parliament  are  duly  taken  into
consideration.’ It does not even mention ESDP
explicitly. However, this wording has not pre-
vented  the  presidency  and  the  Council  from
informally extending consultations to the realm
of  ESDP.50 One  member  of  the  EP’s  foreign
affairs committee even observed that the High
Representative, Javier Solana, and the Commis-
sioner  for  External  Affairs,  Chris  Patten,  dis-
cussed external affairs with the committee more
frequently than their national counterparts did
with  national  parliaments.  As  these  habits
underline,  the  scope  of  Article  21  should  be
extended to security and defence policy. Indeed,
the constitutional treaty suggests a rewording.
According to Article I-41 (8), 

The European Parliament shall be regularly
consulted  on  the  main  aspects  and  basic
choices of the common security and defence
policy. It shall be kept informed of how it
evolves.

Although the European Parliament has been
the  natural  candidate  for  securing  suprana-
tional input legitimacy it has had to compete
with the Western European Union’s Parliamen-
tary  Assembly.  This  rather  odd  situation
resulted from the transfer of operational tasks
from WEU to the EU in 2000. Because WEU’s
mutual defence commitment is more constrain-
ing than that of NATO, members of WEU pre-
ferred not to dissolve WEU but only to transfer
its operational tasks to the EU. The decision not
to dissolve WEU’s Brussels Treaty also implied
that its Article IX, which requires the Council of
WEU to submit an annual report to the WEU
Parliamentary Assembly, remained valid. At the
time, some urged the Parliamentary Assembly
to  dissolve  itself  because  the  Assembly  was
tasked with supervising WEU politics and had
no mandate to scrutinise EU politics. Instead,
the  parliamentarians,  who  are  not  elected
directly  but  nominated  from  national  parlia-
ments, decided to rename it the ‘Interim Euro-
pean  Security  and  Defence  Assembly’  and  to
continue their work. The Interim Assembly pro-
posed  to  the  European  Convention  that  it
should be included in the constitutional treaty
as a second chamber with members nominated
from national parliaments and responsible for
ESDP. The Interim Assembly would then be part
of the EU’s institutional system.

Adherents to this proposal have pointed to a
number  of  comparative  advantages  that  the
Interim  Assembly  enjoys.  First,  the  Interim
Assembly  has  accrued  considerable  expertise
and experience in monitoring ESDP, not least
because it has a permanent secretariat and spe-
cialised staff.51 The committees’ reports that are
discussed in plenary sessions twice a year give
ample  evidence  of  the  rapporteurs’  expertise.
Their  publication  on  the  Interim  Assembly’s
homepage52 are a welcome resource for a wider
audience interested in security and defence poli-

49 Hänggi, op. cit., quote from p.16.
50 Dimosthenis Mammonas, ‘The Parliamentarisation of the ESDP as an Answer to Global Challenges?’, paper presented at the meeting
of  the  International  Studies  Association,  Budapest,  June  2003,  p.  5;  Catriona  Gourlay,  ‘Parliamentary  Accountability  and  ESDP:  The
National and the European Level’, in Hans Born and Heiner Hänggi (eds.), op. cit., pp. 183-200, pp. 188 f.
51 Suzana-Elena Gavrilescu, ‘Parliamentary Scrutiny of European Security and Defence Policy: is there Anybody in Charge?’, Perspectives,
no. 22, 2004, pp. 75-93.
52 See http://www.assembly-weu.org.

22

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

tics. Second, it brings together parliamentarians
from 28 members of the ‘WEU family’ (as the
Assembly’s homepage puts it). In addition to 23
EU members (i.e. all EU states except Malta and
Cyprus,  which  are  WEU  ‘affiliate  observers’),
this  includes  Bulgaria,  Romania,  Turkey,  Ice-
land and Norway, which are members of NATO
but not of the EU and whose involvement in
ESDP  has  been  heavily  contested.  Thus,  the
Interim Assembly could contribute to good rela-
tions  between  the  EU  and  European  NATO
members on a parliamentary level. Finally, the
Interim Assembly can claim that its composi-
tion  of  national  deputies  is  appropriate  for
ESDP’s intergovernmental structure. After all,
national governments will retain prime respon-
sibility  for  the  foreseeable  future.  Thus,  it
appears  appropriate  to  delegate  democratic
control of ESDP to national parliamentarians in
a transnational institution.

The advantages of giving the Interim Assem-
bly a prominent role in the democratic control
of ESDP are balanced by several disadvantages.
Firstly,  the  members  of  national  parliaments
currently  participating  in  the  WEU/Interim
Assembly do not always belong to the defence
and foreign affairs committees in their respec-
tive parliaments, since they usually also partici-
pate in the Council of Europe Assembly. How-
ever, most importantly, a second chamber for
the democratic control of ESDP would add fur-
ther complexity to the institutional system of
the EU. Such an increase in complexity would
conflict with transparent and clear-cut lines of
accountability which are a prerequisite of demo-
cratic  legitimacy.  Moreover,  an  institutional
separation of ESDP and other issues of external
relations seems artificial and difficult to main-
tain. At a time when the EU’s ‘double executive’
in external affairs is beginning to merge in order
to increase policy coherence, as suggested in the
draft Constitutional Treaty, it seems odd to cre-
ate a ‘double legislative’ to supervise external
policies. What is more, turf battles between the
EP  and  the  Interim  Assembly  are  inevitable.
Finally,  over  the  last  couple  of  years,  the 

European Parliament has begun to redress the
lack of resources devoted to ESDP.53 Whereas its
foreign affairs committee devoted a consider-
able  part  of  its  resources  to  the  enlargement
process  during  the  fifth  parliamentary  term
(1999-2004), the current committee has estab-
lished a subcommittee on security and defence,
which is a clear indicator of future priorities.
Since  2002,  an  interinstitutional  agreement
gives the Council the possibility to share classi-
fied documents with a small committee of the
EP. As Catriona Gourlay has pointed out, ‘[this]
agreement does not, however, confer rights on
the  parliament  to  receive  access  to  classified
information  but  rather  gives  the  Council  the
right to share classified information “where it is
appropriate  and  possible  in  the  light  of  the
nature and the content of the information”.’54
Furthermore, the EP has endeavoured to culti-
vate good relations with NATO’s Parliamentary
Assembly (PA). Since 2001, the EP has sent a del-
egation to NATO PA’s sessions. Moreover, there
have been joint sessions of EP and PA commit-
tees. In this way, the EP has demonstrated its
ability  to  foster  relations  with  those  NATO
countries that are not members of the EU.

Drawing  on  the  three  factors  determining
the  effectiveness  of  parliamentary  oversight,
one can conclude that the European Parliament
has now begun to enhance its ability to use the
legal powers it has. Therefore, the EP remains
the  unrivalled  institution  for  supranational
input  legitimacy.  However,  the  EP’s  prime
responsibility in ESDP does not preclude a sup-
plementary input from a further institution in
which delegates from national parliaments can
discuss issues of European security and defence
policy. As long as security and defence remains a
‘mixed competence’ that requires close coordi-
nation  between  EU  institutions  and  member
state governments, a system of ‘multi-level Par-
liamentary control’ seems most appropriate. At
the heart of such a system would be an institu-
tionalised exchange of information and of view-
points between delegates. 

53 For the following, see the contribution of Elmar Brok and Norbert Gresch to Nicole Gnesotto (ed.), EU Security and Defence Policy. The first
five years (Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies, 2004).
54 Gourlay, op. cit., p. 190.

23

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

Ultimately, it is the parliaments themselves
that  have  to  decide  how  to  organise  such  an
exchange  of  information  and  points  of  view.
After  all,  the  success  of  interparliamentary
cooperation depends first of all on delegates’
efforts and commitment. Four options can be
suggested for discussion.

First, of course, a new institution could be
established. The latest proposal in this vein was
submitted to the ‘Constitutional Convention’.
Its  President,  Valéry  Giscard  d’Estaing,  pro-
posed a ‘Congress of European peoples’, com-
posed  of  members  of  the  European  and  of
national parliaments, which would meet on a
regular,  possibly  annual,  basis.  However,  the
intentionally
proposal  was  suspected  of 
attempting to weaken the European Parliament.
Mainly for this reason, it did not find a majority
among the delegates in the Convention and was
dropped from the final version of the Treaty. 

Second, interparliamentary cooperation in
security and defence policy could be organised
by the European Parliament.55 Such an endeav-
our could build upon interparliamentary coop-
eration on first-pillar (i.e. European Commu-
nity) issues.56 Here, joint sessions of EP commit-
tees  with  their  national  counterparts  have
served  to  exchange  information  and  views.
Moreover, joint committee sessions have given
members of national parliaments the opportu-
nity to address EU officials directly. So far, this
instrument  has  hardly  been  used  in  foreign,
security and defence policy. However, the new
subcommittee  on  security  and  defence  may
choose to make interparliamentary cooperation
a priority of its work.

Third,  the  Conference  of  the  Community
and  European  Affairs  Committees  of  Parlia-
ments of the European Union (COSAC) could

make security and defence policy a new focus of
its  work.  What  makes  COSAC  an  interesting
institution to build on is that it has not been a
creation of the member state governments but
an example of parliamentary self-organisation
resulting from an initiative by the then Presi-
dent of the French Assemblée Nationale, Laurent
Fabius. Thus, it has been a successful and visible
expression of national parliaments’ desire and
capacity  to  strengthen 
interparliamentary
cooperation.  Since  1989,  national  European
Affairs committees as well as the European Par-
liament,  have  delegated  six  deputies  to  the
COSAC meetings that take place twice a year
before  the  meeting  of  the  European  Council.
COSAC has so far focused almost exclusively on
institutional  questions.  In  contrast,  security
and defence issues have played only a marginal
role.57 COSAC’s focus would be easy to change,
however, precisely because it has been an exercise
in parliamentary self-organisation and does not
depend  on  intergovernmental  conferences  to
change its status. In order to give security and
defence policy a more prominent role, COSAC
would have to give members of national parlia-
ments’ foreign affairs and defence committees
access to COSAC. This, of course, requires the
members of the European affairs committees to
share some of their powers. In addition, two fur-
ther changes seem necessary if COSAC intends
to become the major forum for interparliamen-
tary  cooperation.  First,  member  parliaments’
delegations should become more representative
of the party pluralism in national parliaments.58
Second,  national  parliamentary  delegations
should no longer sit according to nationality
but by political affiliation in order to encourage
political  dialogue  at  the  European  level.59 It
remains to be seen whether this turns out to be a

55 Catriona Gourlay and Malin Tappert, ‘Revising the European Parliament’s Scrutiny of Foreign Affairs and Defence’, European Security Review,
Issue 21, February 2004.
56 For an overview see Andreas Maurer, ‘Die Konferenz der Europa-Ausschüsse (COSAC) und der Konvent: Schwächung oder Stärkung der
demokratischen Legitimation in der EU’, in Rudolf Geiger (ed.), Neuere Probleme der parlamentarischen Legitimation im Bereich der auswärtigen Gewalt
(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003), pp. 187-227.
57 Mittag, op. cit. in note 24, p. 97.
58 Michael Hilger, ‘Défense européenne et contrôle démocratique: une tâche pour la Convention sur l’avenir de l’Europe’, Politique Etrangère,
vol. 67, no. 2, 2002, pp. 455-70.
59 Gavrilescu, op. cit., p. 87.

24

Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

significant obstacle to making COSAC the cen-
tre of multilevel parliamentary control in secu-
rity and defence policy. 

Finally, efforts to organise interparliamen-
tary cooperation in security and defence could
of course build upon the WEU Interim Assem-
bly, whose merits have been discussed above. As
also mentioned above, however, the European
Parliament tends to regard the Interim Assem-
bly more as a competitor than a collaborator.
The  Interim  Assembly  could,  however,  seek
stronger ties with COSAC. For example, it could
aim at becoming a sort of security and defence
chamber of COSAC.

Responsibility  for  democratic  legitimacy
should thus not be left to national parliaments
alone. Because the Europeanisation of security
and  defence  policy  tends  to  weaken  national
parliaments vis-à-vis their executives, a multi-
level  system  of  parliamentary  control  seems
most appropriate. In addition to national par-
liaments’ tasks, such a system would include a
strong European Parliament and some form of
interparliamentary  cooperation  comprising
both  the  European  and  the  national  parlia-
ments. As regards the European Parliament, the
Constitutional Treaty would enhance suprana-
tional input legitimacy. Although the EP would
not acquire competencies akin to those in single
market legislation, its competencies in foreign
policy would be explicitly extended to security
and defence policy. As regards interparliamen-
tary  cooperation,  several  institutional  venues
appear possible, and it is up to the members of
national parliaments in particular to organise
cooperation.

3.4 ESDP and international 
law
The three ‘pillars’ of legitimacy discussed so far
are not specific to security and defence policy.
Congruence with the preferences and expecta-
tion of citizens (‘government for the people’)

and participation and supervision by national
and supranational parliaments (‘government by
the  people’)  are  acknowledged  standards  of
democratic legitimacy that apply to the entire
range of issue areas in European integration.

This section adds a fourth pillar of legitimacy
that is prominent in security and defence policy
though  of  lesser  prominence  in  other  issue
areas, namely respect for and compliance with
international law. In contrast to parliamentary
involvement, the importance of international
law for the legitimacy of security and defence
policy  is  not  limited  to  democratic  states.
Strictly  speaking,  respect  for  and  compliance
with international law is not a pillar of democratic
legitimacy. Defence policies of non-democracies
may also gain legitimacy to the extent that they
concur with international law. The principle of
democratic  self-government  may  even  come
into  conflict  with  obligations  resulting  from
international law: for example, decisions on the
legitimacy of military force under the Charter of
the  United  Nations  are  made  in  the  Security
Council, in which non-democracies have been
endowed with veto power. From a democratic
public’s  point  of  view,  it  may  appear  highly
problematic  that  governments  that  have  not
been legitimised by free and fair elections may
obstruct a military mission that has been sup-
ported by majorities in democratic states. This
conflict may be further exacerbated if a military
mission aims to address humanitarian disasters
or excessive human rights violations. In such
cases, legal obligations to respect a possible veto
in the Security Council clash with moral obliga-
tions to help other people in need that are often
felt among democratic publics and frequently
lead  to  an  expectation  of  intervention  for
humanitarian  reasons.  The  most  well-known
example of such a conflict has been the Kosovo
campaign  in  1999,  when  governments  and
publics in Western democracies had to weigh
their legal obligations under the United Nations
Charter  against  their  moral  obligations  to 
rescue hundreds of thousands of people from

25

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

‘ethnic cleansing’.60 In most Western democra-
cies, public deliberations resulted in a decision
to participate in a NATO-led campaign against
Serbian targets.

Notwithstanding  these  tensions  between
non-democracies’ influence in international law
and democratic self-rule, the respect for interna-
tional law has generally played a prominent role
in democracies. After all, the adherence of gov-
ernment action to the law has been a character-
istic feature of liberal democracies. It does not
come as a surprise, therefore, that democracies
have been major driving forces in the legalisa-
tion of world politics. 

The  importance  of  international  law  is
reflected in the fact that the congruence of poli-
cies with international law impacts on citizens‘
attitudes  towards  their  legitimacy.  After  all,
legitimacy refers to subjective normative convic-
tion. The impact of international law on the atti-
tudes of citizens can be illustrated by a survey
commissioned by the German Marshall Fund in
June 2003.61 Interviewees in the United States,

France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy,
the Netherlands, Portugal and Poland were con-
fronted  with  the  hypothetical  scenarios  that
Iran or North Korea had acquired weapons of
mass  destruction.  Respondents  were  asked
whether they would support their government’s
decision to take part in an attack against North
Korea or Iran respectively. The initial decision to
attack was presented as having been taken either
‘by the USA’, ‘by NATO’, ‘by the USA and its
allies’ or ‘by the United Nations Security Coun-
cil’. The results (see table below) highlight the
prominent  role  of  international  law:  in  five
countries,  the  levels  of  support  were  always
achieved  for  missions  mandated  by  the  UN
Security Council. In two countries, regarding
North Korea, and three others, regarding Iran,
support was highest for missions mandated by
NATO. Poland is the only country in which an
attack  decided  ‘by  the  United  States  and  its
allies’ received the highest support rate in the
case of North Korea.

Support for national governments’ decisions to take part in an attack against North Korea 
(first figure) / Iran (second figure); (highest figure bold) 

by the 
United States 

by NATO 

by the 
United States 
and its allies 

by the 
United Nations 
Security Council 

United States 

58 / 67 

68 / 78 

53 /73 

United 
Kingdom 

France 

Germany 

Netherlands 

Italy 

Poland 

Portugal 

37 / 51 

55 / 66 

49 / 58 

41 / 44 

20 / 32 

33 / 45 

24 / 26 

37 / 38 

25 / 28 

47 / 54 

34 / 29 

44 / 54 

32 / 34 

38 / 51 

39 / 47 

43 / 47 

30 / 33 

40 /40 

24 / 38 

41 / 40 

34 / 38 

72 / 75 

56 / 70 

45 / 56 

33 / 46 

52 / 48 

37 / 44 

31 / 38 

44 / 48 

60 In addition, Martin Ortega has argued that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was legitimate for three reasons: ‘First, the operation was
decided upon and undertaken by an alliance of 19 member states, which represents 10 per cent of the total membership of the UN. Second,
the intervention was expressly endorsed by all 42 states participating in the Washington NATO summit of April 1999. Third, the intervention
was  later  implicitly  legitimised  by  Security  Council  Resolution  1244  of  10  June  1999’,  Martin  Ortega,  ‘Military  Intervention  and  the
European Union’, Chaillot Paper 45 (Paris: Institute for Security Studies of WEU, 2001), p. 35.
61 TNS  Sofres  2003:  Transatlantic  Trends;  http://www.transatlantictrends.org/apps/gmf/ttweb.nsf/sitepages/78A78C5D17AD
489D85256D78007A536D?OpenDocument&Start=1&Count=30&Expand=1.

26

 
Pillars of democratic legitimacy for ESDP

The data illustrate the importance of a multi-
lateral mandate for military action. Moreover,
they underline that the UN Security Council has
been unrivalled as the institution for conferring
legitimacy on military action.62

As a distinct source of legitimacy for military
action, international law has gained in impor-
tance for two reasons. First, a growing number
of military missions are no longer motivated by
self-defence. Instead, violations of international
law (as in the Gulf War of 1991) human rights
violations (as in Kosovo in 1999) or civil war (as
in Haiti in 1994) have become frequently cited
reasons for military intervention. Because these
military interventions deeply penetrate into the
‘internal’ affairs of sovereign states, they require
a higher level of legitimacy than the defence of a
country’s own territory after an attack. 

Second, the emergence of an international
system of collective security increases tensions
with parliamentary control at the national level.
As  Charlotte  Ku  and  Harold  Jacobsen  have
argued, ‘[a] collective security system assumes
that states that have committed themselves to
use military forces will do so automatically in
specific  situations  without  further  debate.’63
Thus, there is ‘an inherent tension between the
expectations  of  collective  security  and  the
demand  for  democratic  accountability  with
respect to decisions to deploy and use military
force.’64

Thus, adherence to international law seems
to be suitable compensation for a loss of demo-
cratic control over the use of force. Indeed, the
concept of such compensation can be found in
member state law: for example, the Swedish Riks-
dag must generally approve of military missions.
In the case of missions under Article 43 of the

UN Charter,65 however, parliamentary approval
is not considered necessary. The same holds true
for other international agreements endorsed by
the Riksdag – including the European security
and defence policy.

Several  of  ESDP’s  core  documents  have
referred  to  the  importance  of  the  United
Nations  Charter.  The  Treaty  on  European
Union (Nice version) spells out as the objective
of the common foreign and security policy ‘to
safeguard  the  common  values,  fundamental
interests,  independence  and  integrity  of  the
Union in conformity with the principles of the United
Nations Charter’ (Article 11, emphasis added). In
a similar way, the draft Constitutional Treaty
refers to ESDP missions ‘in accordance with the
principles of the UN Charter’.66 Moreover, the
1999  Helsinki  European  Council,  which
announced the military headline goal for ESDP,
‘recognises  the  primary  responsibility  of  the
United Nations Security Council for the mainte-
nance  of  international  peace  and  security.’67
Finally, the European Security Strategy, which
was  drafted  by  the  High  Representative  and
adopted by member states, repeats the UN Secu-
rity  Council’s  ‘primary  responsibility  for  the
maintenance of international peace and secu-
rity’, adds a general commitment ‘to upholding
and  developing 
International  Law’  and
announces  a  Strengthening  of  the  United
Nations as ‘a European priority’.68

However, the EU has so far abstained from an
explicit statement that EU-led military missions
would require a UN Security Council mandate
because a consensus among member states has
not  been  attainable.  Whereas  some  member
states, including Finland, France, Ireland and
Sweden, attach great importance to obtaining

62 For similar empirical results on the United States, see also Terrence L. Chapman and Dan Reiter, ‘The United Nations Security Council
and the Rally Round the Flag Effect’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 48, no. 6, 2004, pp. 886-909.
63 Charlotte Ku and Harold Jacobson, ‘Broaching the Issues’, in Hans Born and Heiner Hänggi (eds.), op. cit., pp. 3-35, p. 13.
64 Ibid., p. 14.
65 According to Article 43, the ‘Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and
security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed
forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.’
66 Art. I-41.
67 Conclusions of the Helsinki European Council 1999, digit 26.
68 Javier Solana, ‘A secure Europe in a better world. European Security Strategy’, document adopted at the European Council, Brussels, 12
December 2003.

27

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

such a mandate, others, particularly the United
Kingdom, hold a different view.69 These differ-
ences are likely to persist, mainly because they
reflect deep-seated convictions about the rela-
tionship  between  obligations  under  interna-
law  and  humanitarian  concerns.70
tional 
ESDP’s core documents reflect this impasse in
frequent  references  to  the  importance  of  the
UN, yet without specifying that a UNSC man-
date is a prerequisite for EU-led military opera-
tions. Neither the European Convention nor the

Intergovernmental Conference devoted much
time  to  this  issue,  because  member  states
seemed unlikely to change their respective posi-
tions. Because of its importance for many states,
however,  the  question  of  a  Security  Council
mandate will resurface whenever the Council is
considering an EU-led military operation. All in
all, the ambivalence of ESDP regarding a UNSC
mandate  has  weakened  this  fourth  pillar  of
(democratic) legitimacy.

69 See Isabelle Ioannides, ‘The European Rapid Reaction Force: Implications for Democratic Accountability’, BICC Paper 24 (Bonn: Bonn
International  Center  For  Conversion,  2002),  p.  34.  See  also  Albrecht  Schnabel,  ‘The  European  Union,  ESDP  and  the  United  Nations:
Competitors or Partners?’, in Hans-Georg Ehrhart (ed.), Die Europäische Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik. Positionen, Perzeptionen, Probleme,
Perspektiven (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002), pp. 304-18, p. 313.
70 Of course, adherence to international law is only required for peace-keeping and peace-enforcement missions. Missions at the low end
of the range of Petersberg tasks (disaster relief or police missions) would not require a UN mandate.

28

Conclusion

As in other areas of European integration, the

democratic  legitimacy  of  security  and
defence policy rests on the consent of European
citizens (‘output legitimacy’) and on the partici-
pation and supervision of national and supra-
national parliaments (intergovernmental and
supranational ‘input legitimacy’). In contrast to
other issue areas in the European Union, adher-
ence to international law constitutes a fourth
pillar of legitimacy.

The previous sections have argued that none
of the four pillars on which the legitimacy of
ESDP rests is very robust. In particular, none of
them appears sufficiently stable to hold in the
event of military missions involving large num-
bers of casualties. To be sure, European citizens
have great sympathy for the project of a Euro-
pean security and defence policy. As experiences
from  other  states  demonstrate,  however,  this
sympathy for the project of a ESDP does not nec-
essarily extend to an ESDP in practice. Moreover,
there  are  still  large  differences  in  support
between member states. 

As  regards  intergovernmental  input  legiti-
macy, the involvement of national parliaments
differs widely across member states. From this
perspective,  a  European  security  and  defence
policy appears democratically legitimate to the
extent that national standards are adhered to in
every single member state. However, those mem-
ber states with traditionally high levels of parlia-
mentary  involvement  in  particular  have  been
put  under  mounting  pressure  to  adapt  their
decision-making processes to the requirements
of multinational out-of-area operations. To the
extent that military structures have been inte-

grated internationally, a single member state’s
decision not to participate in a joint mission
may block the entire endeavour. This problem is
familiar to students of European integration,
because  national  self-government  has  been
weakened by the transfer of decision-making to
a European level in many issue areas.

Adherents of supranational input legitimacy
have  argued  that  the  democratic  deficit  that
results from a weakening of democratic control
at the national level has to be addressed at the
supranational level. The European Parliament
must certainly be the centre of supranational
input legitimacy. The Draft Treaty on a Euro-
pean Constitution makes an important contri-
bution  to  strengthening  and  clarifying  the
European Parliament’s role in ESDP. Moreover,
the European Parliament has begun to devote
more resources to ESDP. What is more, by culti-
vating  relations  with  NATO’s  Parliamentary
Assembly, it has taken over an important func-
tion that was previously exercised by the WEU
Parliamentary Assembly. However, the Council
has retained important prerogatives, for exam-
ple the right to determine whether to share clas-
sified information. As a consequence, the Euro-
pean Parliament still lacks the powers to com-
pensate for the loss of powers of the national
parliaments. Another important way to redress
the deficit of parliamentary legitimacy would be
to strengthen cooperation between the Euro-
pean  and  the  national  parliaments.  Whether
interparliamentary cooperation centres on the
European  Parliament,  COSAC  or  the  WEU
Interim  Assembly  seems  to  be  of  secondary
importance. 

4

29

The democratic legitimacy of ESDP

The weaknesses of these classical pillars of
democratic legitimacy could be balanced by the
fourth pillar of legitimacy in ESDP, i.e. adher-
ence to international law. The EU has remained
ambiguous as regards the requirement to have a
UN Security Council mandate and – given the
strongly held views among both proponents and
critics of such a requirement – is likely to remain
so.

As in other areas of European politics, output
and input legitimacy come easily into conflict. 

For example, the integration of military struc-
tures may increase the efficiency of ESDP but
may  weaken  its  legitimacy  in  those  member
states whose parliaments as a result face mount-
ing difficulties to participate in decision-mak-
ing. From the discussion of the various pillars of
democratic legitimacy, one important conclu-
sion can be drawn: any attempt to increase out-
put legitimacy by making ESDP more efficient at
the expense of intergovernmental input legiti-
macy involves high risks. 

30

Annexes 

1
e
l
b
a
T

y
c
i
l

o
P
y
t
i
r
u
c
e
S
d
n
a
e
c
n
e
f
e
D
n
o
m
m
o
C
?
s
e
u
s
s
i
y
e
k

r
o
f

t
r
o
p
p
u
S

0
9

0
8

0
7

0
6

0
5

0
4

0
3

0
2

0
1

0

Percentage

a
1

Table 1

t
s
n

i

a
g
a

r
o
f

)
1
6
-
4
3
;
0
3
.
s
o
n
r
e
t
e
m
o
r
a
b
o
r
u
E
:
e
c
r
u
o
S
(

k
r
o
w
d
l
e
i
F

10-11/03
10-11/02
10-11/01
11-12/00
10-11/99
10-11/98
10-11/97
10-11/96
10-12/95
12/94
10-11/93
9-10/92
10-11/91
10-11/90
7/89
10-11/88

31

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
a

Table 2

2
e
l
b
a
T

?
U
E
r
o

l

a
n
o
i
t
a
n
:
e
c
n
e
f
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D

0
6

0
5

0
4

0
3

0
2

0
1

0

Percentage

32

U
E

l

a
n
o

i
t
a
n

)
0
6
-
6
5
d
n
a

4
5
-
1
3
.
s
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:
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S
(

k
r
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w
d
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e
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F

2-3/04
3-4/03
4/02
4-5/01
4-5/00
3-4/99
4-5/98
2-6/97
2-5/96
4-5/95
4-5/94
3-4/93
3-4/92
3/91
3-4/90
3-4/89

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
a
1

Table 3

y
l

a
t
I

m
o
d
g
n

i

K
d
e
t
i

n
U

n
e
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d
n
a

l
e
r
I

y
n
a
m
r
e
G

e
c
n
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r
F

)
0
6
-
6
5
d
n
a

4
5
-
1
3
.
s
o
n
r
e
t
e
m
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r
a
b
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r
u
E
:
e
c
r
u
o
S
(

k
r
o
w
d
l
e
i
F

4/02 10-11/02 3-4/03 10-11/03

12/94 4-5/95 10-12/95 2-5/96 10-11/96 2-6/97 10-11/97 4-5/98 10-11/98 3-4/99 10-11/99 4-5/00 11-12/00 4-5/01 10-11/01

3/91 10-11/91 3-4/92 9-10/92 3-4/93 10-11/93 4-5/94

7/89 3-4/90 10-11/90

3-4/89

33

3
e
l
b
a
T

s
e
t
a
t
s

r
e
b
m
e
m
n
e
e
w
t
e
b
y
c
i
l

o
p
y
t
i
r
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c
e
s
n
a
e
p
o
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u
E
r
o
f

s
e
t
a
r

t
r
o
p
p
u
s
n

i

s
e
c
n
e
r
e
f
f
i

D

0
8

0
7

0
6

0
5

0
4

0
3

0
2

0
1

0

Percentage

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
a

Table 4

4
e
l
b
a
T

:
e
c
n
e
f
e
d
n

i

i

g
n
k
a
m
-
n
o
i
s
i
c
e
d

l
e
v
e
l

U
E

s
e
t
a
t
s

r
e
b
m
e
m

s
s
o
r
c
a

l
e
v
e
l

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

f
o
e
c
n
e
g
r
e
v
n
o
c
o
n

0
9

0
8

0
7

0
6

0
5

0
4

0
3

0
2

0
1

0

Percentage

34

)
5
1
U
E
(

e
t
a
r

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

t
s
e
w
o

l

)
2
1
-
U
E
(

e
t
a
r

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

t
s
e
w
o

l

)
l
a
c
i
t
n
e
d

i

5
1
U
E
d
n
a
2
1
U
E
(

e
t
a
r

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

t
s
e
h
g
i
h

)
0
6
-
6
5
;
4
5
-
1
3
.
s
o
n
r
e
t
e
m
o
r
a
b
o
r
u
E
:
e
c
r
u
o
S
(

k
r
o
w
d
l
e
i
F

2-3/04
3-4/03 10-11/03
4/02 10-11/02
4-5/01 10-11/01
4-5/00 11-12/00
3-4/99 10-11/99
4-5/98 10-11/98
2-6/97 10-11/97
2-5/96 10-11/96
4-5/95 10-12/95
12/94
4-5/94
3-4/93 10-11/93
3-4/92 9-10/92
3/91 10-11/91
3-4/90 10-11/90

7/89

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
a
1

Table 5

)
5
1
U
E
(

e
t
a
r

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

t
s
e
w
o

l

)
2
1
-
U
E
(

e
t
a
r

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

t
s
e
w
o

l

)
l

a
c
i
t
n
e
d

i

5
1
-
U
E
d
n
a
2
1
U
E
(

e
t
a
r

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

t
s
e
h
g
i
h

)
0
6
-
6
5
;
4
5
-
1
3
.
s
o
n
r
e
t
e
m
o
r
a
b
o
r
u
E
:
e
c
r
u
o
S
(

k
r
o
w
d
l
e
i
F

3-4/03
4/02 10-11/02
4-5/01 10-11/01
4-5/00 11-12/00
3-4/99 10-11/99
4-5/98 10-11/98
2-6/97 10-11/97
2-5/96 10-11/96
4-5/95 10-12/95
12/94
4-5/94
3-4/93 10-11/93
3-4/92 9-10/92
3/91 10-11/91
3-4/90 10-11/90

7/89

35

5
e
l
b
a
T

:
e
c
n
e
f
e
d
n
a
e
p
o
r
u
E
r
o
f

t
r
o
p
p
u
S

s
e
t
a
t
s

r
e
b
m
e
m

s
s
o
r
c
a
s
l
e
v
e
l

t
r
o
p
p
u
s

f
o
e
c
n
e
g
r
e
v
n
o
c
o
n

0
0
1

0
9

0
8

0
7

0
6

0
5

0
4

0
3

0
2

0
1

0

Percentage

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Occasional Papers

All Occasional Papers
can be accessed via the institute’s website:
www.iss-eu.org

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n° 55

n° 54

n° 53

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n° 40

From America’s protégé to constructive European. Polish security
policy in the twenty-first century
Marcin Zaborowski

La gestion des crises en Afrique subsaharienne. Le rôle de l’Union
européenne (traduction et actualisation du nº 51)
Fernanda Faria

EU enlargement and armaments. Defence industries and markets of
the Visegrad countries 
Timo Behr and Albane Siwiecki; edited by Burkard Schmitt

Europe’s next shore: the Black Sea region after EU enlargement
Mustafa Aydin

Rethinking the Euro-Mediterranean political and security dialogue
Rosa Balfour

Crisis management in sub-Saharan Africa. The role of the European
Union
Fernanda Faria

For our eyes only? Shaping an intelligence community within the EU 
Björn Müller-Wille

EU cohesion in the UN General Assembly
Paul Luif

Space and security policy in Europe: Executive summary
Stefano Silvestri, Rapporteur

EU and Ukraine: a turning point in 2004?
Taras Kuzio

EU-Russian security dimensions
Edited by Dov Lynch

€uros for ESDP: financing EU operations
Antonio Missiroli

The Galileo satellite system and its security implications  
Gustav Lindström with Giovanni Gasparini

La question du Cachemire. Après le 11 septembre et la nouvelle 
donne au Jammu et Cachemire 
Christophe Jaffrelot et Jasmine Zérinini-Brotel

L’Union en action : la mission de police en Bosnie 
Agnieszka Nowak

La Bulgarie et la Roumanie dans le Pacte de stabilité
Ralitza Dimtcheva

Iraq: a European point of view 
Martin Ortega

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