From the European defence community to permanent structured cooperation

Abstract

The steps taken last year to establish the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) may remind us of the efforts made by several countries after the Second World War to build a European Defence Community (EDC). Here I assess the measures taken by London, Paris, Brussels, Bonn and Washington, and recall the wars of Indochina and Korea. Though widely considered a failure, the EDC project in fact led to the foundation of a new institution, the Western European Union (WEU), which has complemented NATO’s objectives for many years.