There have been a number of EU military operations in the last few years, evidence of a growing European military confidence, which in turn is a reflection of a developing competence in security matters. The creation of the European Union and its Common Foreign and Security Policy by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 heralded this development, though the idea of a common defense can be traced to the beginnings of European integration. This book provides an analysis of the EU's evolving legal framework and powers on such matters, but it also recognizes that such a framework sits, sometimes...

This monograph examines the legal dimension of European defense integration from the Second World War to the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe. It covers the evolution of European defense and security law in its legal, historical, and political context. The notion of defense law describes the entire field of rules created to regulate the defense of a nation or alliance. The analysis leads from the earliest mutual defense treaties to the failure of the European Defence Community and the eventual separation of defense from the mainstream of European integration in the 1950s, further...