Permanent Structured Cooperation
Based on Wikipedia: Permanent Structured Cooperation
In 2017, something remarkable happened that most people outside of Brussels barely noticed: twenty-five European countries quietly agreed to start building a joint military capability. After decades of false starts, vetoes, and diplomatic squabbling, the European Union finally activated what insiders call PESCO—the Permanent Structured Cooperation. It had been written into European law eight years earlier, but no one had bothered to switch it on.
Jean-Claude Juncker, who served as President of the European Commission, had a name for it: the Lisbon Treaty's "sleeping beauty."
The beauty finally woke up because the world around Europe had become frightening.
Why Europe Decided It Needed Its Own Military
To understand PESCO, you need to understand the crisis of confidence that swept through European capitals in the mid-2010s. It wasn't one thing—it was everything happening at once.
In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. This was the first forcible annexation of European territory since World War Two. For countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all of which share borders with Russia or its close ally Belarus—this was not an abstract geopolitical event. It was an existential reminder.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Civil War and the Libyan Civil War were generating the largest refugee flows Europe had seen in generations. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, better known by its acronym ISIS, was conducting terrorist attacks on European soil. The Mediterranean had become a graveyard for migrants trying to reach European shores.
Then came 2016, a year that shattered assumptions.
First, Britain voted to leave the European Union. The United Kingdom was one of Europe's two major military powers (the other being France), and its departure meant the EU was losing a significant chunk of its collective defense capability. It also meant losing a country that had historically blocked deeper European military integration—the British had long preferred that defense remain a matter for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which kept the Americans firmly in the lead.
Second, Americans elected Donald Trump as president. Trump had campaigned on skepticism toward NATO and openly questioned whether the United States would honor its treaty commitments to defend European allies. On several occasions, he refused to explicitly endorse Article 5 of the NATO treaty—the clause that says an attack on one member is an attack on all.
For European leaders, the message was clear. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, put it bluntly at a rally in Bavaria: "The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands."
What PESCO Actually Is
PESCO is essentially a framework for European countries to cooperate on defense without requiring all twenty-seven EU members to participate. Think of it as a club within a club. If you want to join, you have to commit to certain obligations. If you don't want to join, that's fine—you just don't get the benefits.
This "opt-in" structure was crucial for getting PESCO off the ground. The European Union has always struggled with defense cooperation because its members have wildly different strategic cultures. France has significant military capabilities and a tradition of overseas intervention, particularly in Africa. Germany has strong armed forces but constitutional and historical constraints on how they can be used. Ireland and Austria consider themselves neutral countries. Cyprus and Malta are tiny. The idea that all twenty-seven countries would agree on anything military seemed absurd.
PESCO sidesteps this problem by not requiring unanimity. Countries can participate in specific projects without committing to everything. A project on cyber defense might include one set of countries; a project on military transport might include a different set. The structure is flexible enough to accommodate Europe's diversity while still enabling genuine cooperation.
The participating countries make binding commitments. They agree to regularly increase their defense budgets. They agree to increase the share of their defense spending that goes to equipment investment. They agree to increase the share that goes to research and development. They agree to provide personnel and capabilities for European military missions.
These are not just aspirational goals—they're monitored annually.
The Franco-German Compromise
Getting to this point required resolving a fundamental disagreement between France and Germany, the EU's two most powerful members.
France wanted PESCO to be exclusive and ambitious. The French vision was a small group of militarily serious countries that could actually do things—launch operations, deploy forces, fight if necessary. France was particularly interested because its military was overstretched in Africa, where French forces were conducting counterterrorism operations across the Sahel region. Paris wanted help.
Germany wanted PESCO to be inclusive and symbolic. Berlin was worried about creating new divisions within an EU already reeling from Brexit. The Germans saw PESCO primarily as a way to signal European unity and build long-term capabilities, not as a tool for immediate military action. They also had less appetite for overseas deployments.
The compromise was elegant: PESCO would be reimagined as a process rather than a destination.
Any EU country could join as long as it committed to the binding obligations. But not every country had to participate in every project. Progress would be phased, allowing the development of new capabilities without requiring agreement on ultimate goals. Countries didn't need to already have impressive militaries—they just had to pledge to work toward improvement.
This allowed France to pursue its vision of enhanced military capability through specific ambitious projects, while Germany got the inclusive approach it wanted. Both could claim victory.
Who's In and Who's Out
Today, twenty-six of the EU's twenty-seven members participate in PESCO. The lone holdout is Malta, which cited concerns about its constitutional commitment to neutrality.
Denmark was initially out as well, but for different reasons. Denmark had negotiated an opt-out from EU defense policy back in the 1990s, long before PESCO existed. However, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 changed Danish calculations dramatically. In June 2022, Danish voters approved ending the opt-out in a referendum. Denmark formally joined PESCO in May 2023.
The inclusion of Austria and Ireland is noteworthy because both countries consider themselves neutral. Critics, particularly in Ireland, argued that joining PESCO meant abandoning neutrality. The Irish government countered that PESCO's opt-in structure allowed Ireland to participate in beneficial projects—counter-terrorism, cyber security, peacekeeping—without committing to buy aircraft carriers or fighter jets. Ireland could contribute to European security without becoming a military power.
This flexibility is central to PESCO's appeal. It meets countries where they are.
What They're Actually Building
PESCO operates through specific projects, and as of early 2021, there were dozens of them in various stages of development.
One of the most prominent is Military Mobility. This project sounds bureaucratic, but it addresses a genuine problem. If NATO or the EU needed to move troops and equipment quickly across Europe in a crisis, they would face a nightmare of different regulations, incompatible railway gauges, bridges that can't handle tank weights, and paperwork requirements at every border crossing. Military Mobility aims to fix this by harmonizing regulations and improving infrastructure. It's essentially about making Europe's roads, railways, bridges, and tunnels capable of supporting rapid military deployment.
This project has attracted participation from non-EU countries as well. Canada, Norway, and the United States have all joined, recognizing that military mobility benefits everyone who might need to defend Europe. The United Kingdom formally joined in late 2022, and Switzerland was invited in 2025.
Other projects include:
- European Medical Command, to coordinate military medical services
- Cyber Rapid Response Teams and Mutual Assistance in Cyber Security
- European Union Training Mission Competence Centre
- Network of Logistic Hubs and Support for Operations
- Maritime Surveillance projects
- Helicopter training programs
- Development of unmanned ground systems
The initial projects were deliberately kept small-scale. The reason is revealing: European militaries have a fragmentation problem. American forces use about thirty different weapon systems. European forces use one hundred seventy-eight. This makes everything—training, maintenance, supply chains, joint operations—vastly more complicated and expensive. PESCO's early projects focus on building the foundations for future cooperation rather than launching massive procurement programs immediately.
PESCO and NATO: Complement or Competition?
The relationship between PESCO and NATO is delicate.
On paper, PESCO is meant to complement NATO, not compete with it. European officials consistently emphasize this point, and NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been publicly supportive, highlighting Military Mobility as an example of productive EU-NATO cooperation.
But the reality is more complicated.
PESCO was born partly from doubts about American commitment to European defense. If European countries develop genuine military autonomy, that necessarily reduces their dependence on the United States—and therefore reduces American influence over European security policy.
Washington has noticed. The United States has published multiple "warnings" about PESCO, which analysts interpret as concern about losing influence. American officials worry that a militarily self-sufficient EU would make NATO increasingly irrelevant. There are also commercial stakes: the United States sells over one billion euros worth of weapons to EU countries annually. Enhanced European defense cooperation includes efforts to strengthen Europe's own defense industry, potentially at the expense of American arms exports.
According to Françoise Grossetête, who served in the European Parliament from 1994 to 2019, American lobbying against European military cooperation has been intense. She described US officials inviting members of the European Parliament to private dinners, attempting to convince them to vote against directives that would strengthen EU defense integration.
Despite this opposition, the United States eventually expressed interest in joining the Military Mobility project in 2021. Some European analysts viewed this with suspicion, suggesting it might be an attempt to influence PESCO from within.
The tension captures a fundamental ambiguity in European defense policy. Europe wants to be capable of defending itself. It also wants the United States to remain committed to defending Europe. These two goals are not necessarily contradictory, but they create friction.
The Turkish Question
Turkey applied to join the Military Mobility project in May 2021, which created complications.
Austria opposed Turkish participation. Greece and Cyprus, which have longstanding disputes with Turkey over territorial waters and the divided island of Cyprus, were also resistant. Turkey is a NATO ally but not an EU member, and its relationship with both organizations has been strained.
The issue became entangled with Turkey's ratification of Finland and Sweden's NATO membership applications in 2022. In a trilateral memorandum at the Madrid summit that year, Finland and Sweden committed to supporting Turkish participation in PESCO's Military Mobility project as part of the negotiations to secure Turkish approval for their NATO membership.
This kind of linkage between NATO and EU processes illustrates how interconnected European security politics have become.
Hungary's Skepticism
Not every PESCO member is enthusiastic about the project.
Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has expressed skepticism toward PESCO initiatives. The Hungarian government's 2025 strategy emphasized maintaining autonomous defense capabilities through national programs rather than participating in supranational EU military structures. Hungary has a program called Zrínyi 2026 aimed at modernizing its military through bilateral defense procurements and domestic industrial development.
This reflects a broader pattern in Hungarian foreign policy under Orbán: formal membership in European institutions combined with resistance to deeper integration. Hungary participates in PESCO but doesn't necessarily embrace its underlying vision of enhanced cooperation.
The Bigger Picture
PESCO exists within a larger architecture of European defense integration that has developed since 2016.
The Coordinated Annual Review on Defence, known as CARD, provides a mechanism for EU members to share information about their defense plans and identify opportunities for cooperation. The European Defence Fund offers financial incentives for collaborative research and development. The Military Planning and Conduct Capability, or MPCC, provides a permanent command structure for EU military operations.
Together with PESCO, these initiatives form what EU officials call a "comprehensive defence package."
There are also existing European military structures that could potentially be brought under the PESCO framework. Eurocorps, a multinational military force headquartered in Strasbourg, has existed since 1992. The European Gendarmerie Force coordinates police forces with military status. The European Air Transport Command pools military airlift capabilities. None of these are currently PESCO projects, but they represent models of the kind of cooperation PESCO is designed to encourage.
What It Means
PESCO represents something genuinely new in European history: a serious, structured, legally binding attempt to build collective European military capability outside of NATO.
This does not mean Europe is building an army. PESCO does not create a unified military force. It does not establish a single European defense ministry. It does not give the European Union control over member states' armed forces. Each country retains full sovereignty over its own military.
What PESCO does is create mechanisms for countries to cooperate more effectively—to train together, develop equipment together, move forces across borders more easily, share logistics, and coordinate operations. It's building connective tissue between national militaries that have historically operated independently.
Whether PESCO will ultimately succeed depends on sustained political commitment. The crises that activated it—Russian aggression, American unpredictability, British departure—have not gone away. If anything, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 intensified European concerns about security. The question is whether European countries will maintain the political will to actually follow through on their commitments, or whether PESCO will become another example of ambitious European rhetoric without corresponding action.
For now, sleeping beauty is awake. Whether she stays awake remains to be seen.