EU defence ministers also meet in an informal context several times a year, as there is no formal Council configuration on this policy. This instrument can also fund military assistance to partner countries. The European Defence Agency , headed by the HR, supports Member States in developing collaborative defence research and development by identifying gaps and stimulating the European defence industry.
PESCO currently numbers 46 multinational projects covering the defence spectrum. One notable example is the project on military mobility , which aims to improve the movement of troops across and beyond Europe and with which the US has recently been associated.
Prompted by the need for a more effective European defence industry, the EU has set up the European Defence Fund EDF , funding defence research and capability development projects. The United States State Department oversees foreign policy and diplomatic engagement. The Department of Defense DoD is the largest US government agency, responsible for coordinating the branches of the armed forces and military intelligence agencies.
Most service branches also maintain a reserve component, and each of the 50 states equips an Army and Air National Guard that can be federalised in times of war or national emergency. Eleven different combatant commands manage military operations, including the US European Command headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. The chiefs of staff for the service branches collectively make up the Joint Chiefs of Staff , the most senior planning and advisory body in the US military.
Its chair also sits on the National Security Council , a forum of senior staff and agency secretaries that advises the President on matters of national security, military operations, and foreign policy. The content of all documents and articles contained in this blog is the sole responsibility of the author and any opinions expressed therein do not necessarily represent the official position of the European Parliament.
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In addition to securing sea routes, the EU operation supports the transfer of pirates to civilian law enforcement on the ground. The CSDP presence in the Sahel zone, which has been strengthened since , was initially aimed at establishing the corresponding capacities of security authorities. The results are not very convincing. The CSDP mission in Mali was expanded to include border security as a result of the migration crisis. However, the security situation in Libya meant that the mission first had to be established in Tripoli and then moved to Tunis in Although EUBAM Libya was criticised for lacking effectiveness, the mandate was extended at the end of and an office of the mission was moved back to Tripoli.
To this end, its personnel — currently consisting of 38 military and police forces from EU member states — will be increased. The result is a dispute within the EU. The political dispute escalated and negatively impacted on EU foreign and security policy in the southern Mediterranean. Since then, it has contributed to the capacity-building of the Libyan Coast Guard and prevented the illegal transport of weapons in the operational area.
At the same time, their commander was instructed not to deploy any more ships in the Mediterranean. This effectively suspended rescue at sea. Since March , Sophia has been officially limited to surveillance from air, while its mandate is subject to review and renewal every six month.
The work of the Court of Justice of the European Union is essentially about shaping a European legal community. At the same time, there are provisions that contain this particular policy area. Furthermore, natural and legal persons affected by EU external sanctions have the right to a fair trial and to a remedy. Both can be checked by the CJEU. European governments intend to extend their executive power in foreign policy as far as possible.
It has declared the case to be out of its jurisdiction. With regard to the externalisation of EU migration and border controls to third countries, it is not yet possible to speak of a comparably ambitious role for the CJEU in the protection of fundamental rights.
The CJEU rejected a complaint lodged by three asylum seekers against this agreement on purely formal grounds. Furthermore, the applicants argued that such an international agreement should have been based on Articles 78 and of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union TFEU. In addition, a specific readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey has existed since In contrast, the CJEU stated that the EU was not legally competent to issue long-term residence permits and dismissed the lawsuit.
Legal scholars increasingly share the view that the CJEU is reluctant to confront the member states when it comes to international migration policy. This includes EU agencies. As Europol is bound by strict data protection requirements in its new legal basis, complementary legal supervision by the CJEU can be carried out.
Frontex has concluded administrative agreements with many third countries. Their legal status is controversial. For more than 10 years, Frontex has concluded a growing number of administrative agreements with third countries in which only the EU Commission has been involved as negotiator.
In principle, EU member states are responsible for ensuring internal security and public order 65 and can usually only be assisted by EU agencies.
As a result, only seconded officials from the member states are currently able to carry out executive tasks in Frontex missions. These EU border guards would, together with national officials, carry out executive tasks such as checks on persons. The executive action of EU agencies should be clearly regulated and predictable for external actors. With regard to decisions on EU sanctions, the Lisbon Treaty has given the CJEU the competence to ensure compliance with formal legal guarantees for affected individuals.
EU sanctions policy is an example of how higher constitutional and legal requirements for EU foreign policy can give it greater international weight. In , in the wake of the Rosneft case, the CJEU confirmed that it could review national legislation implementing EU sanctions in a comparable way. In June , for the first time, the EU sanctioned six Libyan citizens for their involvement in human trafficking, pursuant to a UN decision.
The coherence of EU external action and the European legal order is under pressure. The judicial review and scrutiny of EU foreign and security policy cannot be done through EU law alone. The following norms have to be respected in border and migration control:.
The EU itself has not yet acceded to the ECHR and is currently not empowered to ensure the implementation of such judgments by the contracting states.
In addition, the extraterritorial application of the ECHR has recently become a challenge for European foreign and security policy. In , the ECtHR issued a ruling in a case against Italy that is decisive for externalised practices of migration control: the so-called Hirsi ruling, which prohibits European authorities from directly refusing refugees at sea.
If the prosecutor were to open an official investigation before the ICC, individual criminal liability of government officials in the EU would be conceivable for the first time. For the admissibility of a claim before the ECtHR, however, the territorial scope of application of the ECHR to its contracting states must also be established.
For example, the ECtHR interpreted the interception of a foreign ship on the high seas by the French military as a comparable situation of sovereign power — consequently, France was called to account.
Hirsi ruling: Italy should not have sent irregular migrants back to Libya without examining their claims for asylum. In the Hirsi case, the ECtHR ruled in that all relevant fundamental rights of the ECHR should be guaranteed to ship occupants, even if a ship is only temporarily taken over by officials of a contracting state.
Although Italian military personnel were not directly involved in the confrontation at sea, they allegedly gave instructions to the Libyan Coast Guard from a military helicopter circling overhead.
This can facilitate the attribution of legal responsibility to Italy. On this basis, many jurists argue that Italy should be held liable for its support of the Libyan Coast Guard. If Libyan forces regularly violate these norms, Italy is not legally authorised to support them.
In the case of Italian and European support for Libyan security forces, this may well be the case. The Libyan authorities are dependent on external aid — so is Europe indirectly responsible for human rights violations? The Libyan Coast Guard is dependent on external support, such as the supply of patrol boats.
These boats are directly involved in picking up people in the Mediterranean. The scope of Italian aid to Libyan forces is set out in a memorandum of understanding from , which may facilitate evidence of intentional action and aid to human rights abuses.
If the EU were to be declared jointly liable, this would set a precedent of high relevance for the entire EU foreign and security policy. In addition, in numerous individual cases, Italian authorities and European officials had passed on information to the Libyan Coast Guard to pick up boats carrying refugees. This also applies to cases of substantial aiding and abetting of criminal offences by third parties. The supplementary competence of the ICC could thus come into play, according to the two experts in international law.
The intervention of this court would even be imperative, since the alleged crimes are to have been committed systematically over several years and the seriousness of the offences to be sufficient. Third, the EU is using Frontex and Europol in the European neighbourhood with the intention of projecting border security and crisis management mechanisms to third countries. These shifting boundaries in foreign and security policy present the EU with the difficult task of having to combine national, European, and international human rights standards with the opposing political objective of a restrictive refugee and migration policy.
The EU has an international legal personality and is bound to these objectives by the Charter of Fundamental Rights. In contrast, there are strong political incentives to relocate migration control to EU third countries, and thus circumvent European legal requirements. However, the EU has neither the emergency powers nor the executive freedoms to protect public order that could justify extrajudicial action.
The aim was to clarify who is legally responsible for the actions of the Libyan Coast Guard, which is supported by Italy and the EU. Against this background, the question arises as to whether, and how, the foreign and security policy actions of the EU meet the criteria of the rule of law.
What role does judicial oversight play in European foreign and security policy, especially where internal and external security intertwine? Internal security is subject to more extensive obligations that arise from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
As authoritarianism and protectionism are on the rise worldwide, the EU is increasingly expected to put democracy, human rights, and the rule of law at the heart of its policies.
Contemporary European foreign and security policy aims for a stronger link between internal and external security. Courts and specific supervision and complaint mechanisms are indispensable for the effective protection of fundamental rights.
A central task of the European Parliament EP and the national parliaments is the oversight of executive powers and to tie them to a legal framework as much as possible. What results from this in practice, for example securing borders? This dilemma between high expectations of the EU and its lack of capabilities as a security provider is not new. Full integration of internal and external security policies could not be achieved. In this personal union, the High Representative and Vice-President of the Commission should establish a link between the external actions of the Commission and those of the Council.
Since the refugee crisis of , this integrated foreign and security policy has taken a questionable direction. Informal cooperation between individual EU states and countries of origin and transit has been the norm for decades when it comes to migration control. Another approach is to establish binding agreements under EU law, which as a rule must be approved by the EP. Since the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty in , the control of irregular migration has become an explicit EU competence.
Since the refugee crisis of , the EU has made informal arrangements to deport more people. However, this approach changed with the onset of the refugee crisis. In particular, the so-called EU-Turkey deal of represents a fundamentally different approach by EU heads of state and government. To this day, this mutual arrangement functions only to a limited extent.
Irrespective of this highly controversial practice, EU representatives and numerous capitals continue to stress that the EU-Turkey deal has been a successful model for migration control. Although the informalisation of European foreign policy takes place outside EU decision-making procedures, it is to be funded from the EU budget, as in the case of the EU-Turkey deal. The EU agencies for law enforcement cooperation Europol and border and coast guard cooperation Frontex should support neighbouring countries of the EU to conduct migration controls and security measures.
Europol was given a new legal basis in 17 in order to process more sensitive data. A new antiterrorism centre has been set up to improve the flow of information both inside and outside the Union.
Cooperation agreements with several North African countries on the exchange of personal data have been under negotiation since then. A European Migrant Smuggling Centre has also been established. Frontex has experienced the greatest growth in response to the refugee crisis.
There they monitor the borders and are supposed to take action against tugs. The mission aims to prevent irregular immigration and cross-border crime from the west coast of Turkey and Egypt to Greece and Italy. To this day, cohesion in the EU and the Schengen zone remains under severe stress. Against this background, Frontex was given a new legal mandate in to support border security in the member states.
Frontex has also been authorised to carry out executive missions in states bordering directly on the EU, such as operational checks on persons and repatriations.
This latest reform is expected to come into force at the end of Who is responsible for the equipment and objectives of integrated EU missions abroad has yet to be clarified.
With the increasing virulence of the refugee problem, however, it has moved into the remit of EU missions and operations. In addition to securing sea routes, the EU operation supports the transfer of pirates to civilian law enforcement on the ground.
The CSDP presence in the Sahel zone, which has been strengthened since , was initially aimed at establishing the corresponding capacities of security authorities. The results are not very convincing. The CSDP mission in Mali was expanded to include border security as a result of the migration crisis.
However, the security situation in Libya meant that the mission first had to be established in Tripoli and then moved to Tunis in Although EUBAM Libya was criticised for lacking effectiveness, the mandate was extended at the end of and an office of the mission was moved back to Tripoli. To this end, its personnel — currently consisting of 38 military and police forces from EU member states — will be increased. The result is a dispute within the EU.
The political dispute escalated and negatively impacted on EU foreign and security policy in the southern Mediterranean. Since then, it has contributed to the capacity-building of the Libyan Coast Guard and prevented the illegal transport of weapons in the operational area. At the same time, their commander was instructed not to deploy any more ships in the Mediterranean. This effectively suspended rescue at sea. Since March , Sophia has been officially limited to surveillance from air, while its mandate is subject to review and renewal every six month.
The work of the Court of Justice of the European Union is essentially about shaping a European legal community. At the same time, there are provisions that contain this particular policy area. Furthermore, natural and legal persons affected by EU external sanctions have the right to a fair trial and to a remedy. Both can be checked by the CJEU. European governments intend to extend their executive power in foreign policy as far as possible. It has declared the case to be out of its jurisdiction.
With regard to the externalisation of EU migration and border controls to third countries, it is not yet possible to speak of a comparably ambitious role for the CJEU in the protection of fundamental rights. The CJEU rejected a complaint lodged by three asylum seekers against this agreement on purely formal grounds. Furthermore, the applicants argued that such an international agreement should have been based on Articles 78 and of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union TFEU.
In addition, a specific readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey has existed since
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