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Verso un'eurozona della difesa. Sviluppo delle flessibilità istituzionali nelle politiche europee di sicurezza e difesa

Authors:
30/12/2012

The concept of institutional flexibility is based on the idea of enabling "able and willing" states to move towards a higher level of integration, creating a laboratory for the European Union's future without compromising the prerogatives of the other partners. The Lisbon Treaty formally introduced institutional flexibility into the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in various forms: in particular, as permanent structured cooperation (a potential prelude to a defence eurozone), thereby contributing to reconfiguring CSDP within the institutional architecture of the European Union. The volume aims to retrace the gradual development of flexibility in the field of security and defence policy from the beginning, in order to describe and assess its significance today in the light of recent important innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. In the conclusion, the author hopes that the new arrangements brought in by the Treaty will give birth to real actions, starting with that "defence eurozone" that would contribute both to developing the EU as a security provider and to completing the objective of political union, even if limited to not all members of the European Union.