Koppa’s presentation was based on her book The Evolution of the Common Security and Defence Policy: Critical Junctures and the Quest for EU Strategic Autonomy published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. The research for the book had taken place before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Koppa presented her analysis on the needs and challenges to build European defence by taking into account this latest crisis that the European Union has had to face.
Koppa noted that her time as a member of the European Parliament, when she also held the position of Coordinator of the Socialist and Democrat Group at the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, had prompted her to research European defence policy as an academic. In her presentation she discussed the origins of European defence, its evolution through crises, and its needs for the future.
Koppa argued that the EU’s Common and Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) sought to build European military capabilities that in the long-term would make the Union a global actor, but it did not seek to provide collective defence, which has been a NATO mission. The defence focus of the CSDP would be to prevent crises outside EU borders from reaching the Union.
