Cuaderno de Estrategia 228. 'EU Common Security and Defense Policy. Quo Vadis? How European capitals understand CSDP'.

This Strategic Notebook has been written by a group of experts on European Defence policy from some EU countries (France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden).

The authors try to provide the view on how their countries really understand the European Union Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It is not about national policy or the official national views, but what it is behind that, what is the real national view, seen from inside. Not being able to include all the EU Member States views, we have selected what we consider the most relevant ones, including the big five, plus Sweden and Finland, due to their recent incorporation to NATO, as well as a kind of European institutional perspective from an expert in Brussels. The book is a mixture of approaches to CSDP and Europe´s defence, quite different ones even in the way the chapters are written and the issue is approached by the authors. In some way it shows the diversity of understandings amongst europeans when we talk about CSDP, and the fact that we still lack a common european view on security and defence, so to say, a common european strategic culture.