Biography

Title: NATO and EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy: Are they complementary or contradictory?

Supervisors:

Prof. Mark Olssen

Dr Tom Dyson

NATO and the EU have had formal relations since 1999 (creation of ESDP), following the creation of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). However, their informal relationship dates a lot earlier than that. Besides sharing the role of security and defence provider for the same continent, since the end of Cold War (1991) NATO and EU security and defence policy have evolved around the same set of systemic international imperatives. The question of how far NATO and ESDP (CSDP since Lisbon Treaty) cooperate and to what extent they diverge from each other lies at the heart of what the two organisations stand for in international security and defence. The aim of this thesis is to set the record straight with regard to NATO – EU cooperation and divergence and moreover place a final emphasis on neoclassical realist theory. The aim is to reach a most complete and appropriate theoretical explanation of the empirical findings on the main research questions about the NATO – EU relationship.