In the following paper we will analyse European security dynamics. By “security dynamics” we mean changes that have occurred in the security environment of the European Union and in the European security and defence policy. We will focus on the period since the end of the Cold War, i.e. roughly since the beginning of the 1990s.

As our analysis is concerned with the security and defence policy (S&D) of European states a few qualifications are in order. First, though the creation of the European Union could be regarded as a means of S&D policy, we treat it here as an “environmental aspect”. Once the EU was established it offered its Member States an array of possibilities to cooperate on security and defence issues that had not been conceivable before. Second, we start our analysis from the perspective of Western European states. This concerns the brief review of the Cold War situation as well as the early years of S&D policy cooperation in the EU. The Union’s enlargement led to the inclusion of many Central and Eastern European states into the newly established S&D policy mechanisms. Finally, the analysis will be mainly concerned with changes at European i.e. EU level but take developments at national level into due consideration, as governments continue to be the main actors in S&D policy.

This paper is one of three Scoping Papers written for the SANDERA. SANDERA brings together a number of scholars from entirely different policy domains – S&D policy on the one hand, and policies to promote the European Research Area (ERA), on the other. These domains have had in the past very few and often hidden links. Hence, the main purpose of this paper is to bring all member of the SANDERA team on one level of understanding the state of affairs and its dynamics in the security and defence domain. Hence, it puts specific emphasis on issues of science and technology and on the links to the ERA.