ABSTRACT

Defence has been made a priority issue in Brussels in response to Brexit. From an integration perspective, the initiatives on defence seem to confirm the notion that crisis can be an impetus for further integration. From this perspective, Brexit opened an area for integration that had hitherto been resistant to efforts to realise synergies between European defence establishments. However, one should be careful accepting the rhetoric of the Commission and certain member states that presented defence initiatives as proof that the Union would become stronger because of Brexit. If one changes perspective from the high politics of integration to the defence domain, it becomes clear that Brexit occurred in the middle of a new dynamism in defence. From this perspective, the integration efforts are but one element in a process of European rearmament that began before Brexit and will end on terms that are not decided in the EU but rather in national capitals. Of these, Berlin is probably the most important one. In the German case, the two perspectives merge because the German Government has found it convenient to dress up its own reinvestment in defence and forging of a European network of military cooperation in the garb of European integration.